Steven Weinberg quotes

Steven Weinberg was an American theoretical physicist renowned for his contributions to the unification of fundamental forces. His work helped shape the Standard Model of particle physics, earning him the Nobel Prize. He inspired generations of scientists through his research and writing. Here are 94 of his quotes:

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. (Steven Weinberg)
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Elementary particles are terribly boring, which is one reason why we're so interested in them. View quote
Steven Weinberg
It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers - not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell. View quote
Steven Weinberg
There is one constant that seems to be fine tuned...and that is dark energy. View quote
Steven Weinberg
One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. View quote
Steven Weinberg
A theorist today is hardly considered respectable if he or she has not introduced at least one new particle for which there is no experimental evidence. View quote
Steven Weinberg
If you have bought one of those T-shirts with Maxwell's equations on the front, you may have to worry about its going out of style, but not about its becoming false. We will go on teaching Maxwellian electrodynamics as long as there are scientists. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible not to believe in God. View quote
Steven Weinberg
In trying to get votes for the Superconducting Super Collider, I was very much involved in lobbying members of Congress, testifying to them, bothering them, and I never heard any of them talk about postmodernism or social constructivism. You have to be very learned to be that wrong. (Steven Weinberg)
Finally, learn something about the history of science, or at a minimum the history of your own branch of science. The least important reason for this is that the history may actually be of some use to you in your own scientific work. View quote
Steven Weinberg
The principles of quantum mechanics are so contrary to ordinary intuition that they can best be motivated by taking a look at their prehistory. View quote
Steven Weinberg
All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Maybe nature is fundamentally ugly, chaotic and complicated. But if it's like that, then I want out. View quote
Steven Weinberg
I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That's a good thing. View quote
Steven Weinberg
If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that-in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play. View quote
Steven Weinberg
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. ... It is very hard to realise that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. View quote
Steven Weinberg
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this? View quote
Steven Weinberg
... I found that I was unable to explain the foundations of quantum mechanics in a way that I found entirely satisfactory. View quote
Steven Weinberg
It doesn't work to build half an accelerator. The particles need to go all the way around. (Steven Weinberg)
The last thirty years of Einstein's life were largely devoted to a search for a so-called unified field theory that would unify James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism with the general theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation. Einstein's attempt was not successful, and with hindsight we can now see that it was misconceived. Not only did Einstein reject quantum mechanics; the scope of his effort was too narrow. ... Nevertheless Einstein's struggle is our struggle today. It is the search for a final theory. View quote
Steven Weinberg
It is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him. View quote
Steven Weinberg
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy. View quote
Steven Weinberg