Quotes from Physicists
On Truth & Experience.. Some connections with Vedanta.
I was seeing the Physics course content for my high schooler and I stumbled upon some quotes in the introduction. It seemed to speak their mind in pursuit of the truth and feeling the oneness and connection with the Universe.
Feel free to skip the introduction and jump to the quotes if you have not read the Gita.
When I started reading Gita 2 years back, some of the verses of Gita reminded me of Newtonian Physics. “We all seem to follow our gunas and then is the impedance force of likes and dislikes throwing us off our peaceful trajectory.” “There is nothing for me to loose or gain and yet I maintain perfect order” reminding of coherence in the sub atomic world to the gravitational forces holding the planets.
“Seeing action in inaction and inaction in action” and yet the Universe outside and inside our body is in action when we think we are in inaction.
And Newton in his words seems to be speaking of this experience of truth. “A small wave of the ocean of truth” “I keep the subject before me..till the light appears” is like the inner vision of Viswaroopa Yoga which is brighter than the Sun. And how true that we are limited in judging this world by our 5 senses. Like he says “the blind man has no idea of colours.” and when he speaks about “walls and bridges”, it seems like Gita’s “sanshaya and shraddha” which I had equated to walls and bridges in my mind.. The 2 forces which could either help in isolation or discovering newer dimensions.
-Isaac Newton
“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
“Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation”
“Genius is patience.”
“What goes up must come down.”
“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me”
“What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.”
“Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.”
“As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.”
“Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait ’til the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”
“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.”
“How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts?
Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?…and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent…?”
-Albert Einstein
“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
