I think also of my colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands, and feel that in some measure I am here as a representative of our small, informal, international fraternity. Murray Gell-Mann More Quotes by Murray Gell-Mann More Quotes From Murray Gell-Mann Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm. Murray Gell-Mann disappointment enthusiasm depression For me, the study of these laws is inseparable from a love of Nature in all its manifestations. The beauty of the basic laws of natural science, as revealed in the study of particles and of the cosmos, is allied to the litheness of a merganser diving in a pure Swedish lake, or the grace of a dolphin leaving shining trails at night in the Gulf of California. Murray Gell-Mann nature night science Modern education is like being taken to the world's greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu. Murray Gell-Mann taken education world What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin. Murray Gell-Mann simple math beautiful Both biological and cultural diversity are now severely threatened and working for their preservation is a critical task. Murray Gell-Mann biology diversity tasks Sustainability is living on nature's income rather than living on its capital. Murray Gell-Mann sustainability living-on income Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory. Murray Gell-Mann compulsory forbidden Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behavior of the whole. Murray Gell-Mann garden race knowledge If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it. Murray Gell-Mann dizzy becoming thinking Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of theorists into thinking that the job (interpreting quantum theory) was done 50 years ago. Murray Gell-Mann jobs science thinking Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the utility of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics. Murray Gell-Mann effectiveness law reality The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night. Murray Gell-Mann jaguars night world Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition Murray Gell-Mann tiny outcomes mean What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. Murray Gell-Mann physics fundamentals beautiful I would recommend that skeptics devote even more effort than they do now to understanding the reasons why so many people want or need to believe. Murray Gell-Mann effort believe people The mathematics clearly called for a set of underlying elementary objects-at that time we needed three types of them-elementary objects that could be combined three at a time in different ways to make all the heavy particles we knew. ... I needed a name for them and called them quarks, after the taunting cry of the gulls, "Three quarks for Muster mark," from Finnegan's Wake by the Irish writer James Joyce. Murray Gell-Mann nomenclature names science All of modern physics is governed by that magnificent and thoroughly confusing discipline called quantum mechanics ... It has survived all tests and there is no reason to believe that there is any flaw in it. We all know how to use it and how to apply it to problems; and so we have learned to live with the fact that nobody can understand it. Murray Gell-Mann confusing discipline believe I thought of killing myself but soon decided that I could always try MIT and then kill myself later if it was that bad but that I couldn't commit suicide and then try MIT afterwards. The two operations, suicide and going to MIT, don't commute. Murray Gell-Mann suicide trying two The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often Murray Gell-Mann quantum chaos world If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs. Murray Gell-Mann dwarfs quip ifs
