Robert B. Laughlin quotes

Robert B. Laughlin is an American physicist recognized for his pioneering work on the quantum Hall effect. His discoveries have significantly advanced the field of condensed matter physics and deepened our understanding of quantum phenomena. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to science. Here are 36 of his quotes:

My mother, who was professional schoolteacher, was particularly concerned about our formal education and even went so far as to start a private school together with some other parents so that our intellectual needs would be met.

Robert B. Laughlin

The questions worth asking, in other words, come not from other people but from nature, and are for the most part delicate things easily drowned out by the noise of everyday life.

Robert B. Laughlin

At Berkeley I had my first encounter with real professional scientists.

Robert B. Laughlin

My childhood home backed onto wheat and cotton fields.

Robert B. Laughlin

When a thing gets very, very small, you can't tell the difference between a solid and a liquid.

Robert B. Laughlin

If you think, as a Western person, that you are not affected by religious traditions, you are sadly mistaken.

Robert B. Laughlin

Science is about measurement, dammit - it's not about ideas. (55:20 in video)

Robert B. Laughlin

It has been my experience that good theoretical physics is empowering, in that it enables thinking to take place that would otherwise not occur, and, in its highest form, facilitates experiments that would otherwise not be done.

Robert B. Laughlin

My rule is simply to do for my students exactly what I hope someone else will do for my sons when the time comes: I teach them to have faith in themselves and in their own compass, to listen to nature to find truth, to love knowledge for the sake of itself, and to strive for greatness.

Robert B. Laughlin

As a consequence while we had a roof over our heads, food on the table, and clothes to wear to school we were constantly conscious of being of modest means.

Robert B. Laughlin

It is an interesting fact that during my tour I was never allowed access to computers, radios, or anything else that I might damage through curiosity, or perhaps something more sinister.

Robert B. Laughlin

My mother also had us take piano lessons, and this had a similar effect. I hated those lessons, but I now play regularly for pleasure and have even tried my hand at composing.

Robert B. Laughlin

Western society has many flaws, and it is good for an educated person to have thought some of these through, even at the expense of losing a lecture or two to tear gas.

Robert B. Laughlin

It was at Bell Labs that I first made direct contact with real semiconductor experts and thus began to fully understand what amazing materials they were and what they could do.

Robert B. Laughlin

To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just as often helps me see things my predecessors have missed.

Robert B. Laughlin

I was an extremely reclusive and introverted boy.

Robert B. Laughlin

In parallel with the development of my interests in technical gadgetry I began to acquire a profound love of and respect for the natural world which motivates my scientific thinking to this day.

Robert B. Laughlin

When I moved to Stanford I began to pursue the line of research I have been following ever since, namely trying to understand the larger implications of fractional quantum hall discovery.

Robert B. Laughlin

What we live in, unfortunately, is a time when we are infected by what I call quantum field theory idolatry.

Robert B. Laughlin

Newton would have been laughed out of the country if Kepler hadn't done the measurement. ... The facts speak for themselves. ... History has shown that you need a little luck - and if you don't have the luck, you're out of luck.

Robert B. Laughlin

I slowly became disillusioned with the reductionist ideal of physics, for it was completely clear that the outcome of these experiments was almost always impossible to predict from first principles, yet was right and meaningful and certainly regulated by the same microscopic laws that work in atoms.

Robert B. Laughlin

I later came to understand that this heckling was a sign of respect from these people, that the ability to handle it was a test of a person's worth, and that polite silence from them was an extremely bad sign, amounting to Pauli's famous criticism that the speaker was "not even wrong."

Robert B. Laughlin