Physics Quote of the Day (October 4 - October 10)

"Young people must break machines to learn how to use them; get another made!" Henry Cavendish, born 10 October 1731.

"In the beginning was mechanics." Max von Laue, born 9 October 1879.

"I don't think you 'can' have scientific policy. I think science is something like weeds, it just grows of its own accord, and if you've got the right atmosphere, ... then it grows and develops of its own accord. And I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them." Mark Oliphant, born 8 October 1901.

"Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are." Niels Bohr, born 7 October 1885.

"For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original." David Brin, born 6 October 1950.

"All a quantum state ever does is move in circles." Sean Carroll, born 5 October 1966.

"In the past century, and even nowadays, one could encounter the opinion that in physics nearly everything had been done. There allegedly are only dim 'cloudlets' in the sky or theory, which will soon be eliminated to give rise to the 'theory of everything'. I consider these views as some kind of blindness. The entire history of physics, as well as the state of present-day physics and, in particular, astrophysics, testifies to the opposite. In my view we are facing a boundless sea of unresolved problems." Vitaly Ginzburg, born 4 October 1916.