Murray Gell-Mann Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Humanity, Nature

  Tags in Connections, Interdependence, Relationships, Science

• We are driven by the insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Science

• Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Depression

• Well, I don’t like to get involved in these philosophical issues very much.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like

• You know, there was a time, just before I started to study physical science, when astronomers thought that systems such as we have here in the solar system required a rare triple collision of stars.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in School, Time

• When you think you’re listening to several conversations at once, they tell me, you may really simply be time sharing – that is, listening a little bit to this one, a little bit to that one.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Time

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think

• As a theoretical physicist, I feel at once proud and humble at the thought of the illustrious figures that have preceded me here to receive the greatest of all honors in science, the Nobel prize.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Greatest, School

• Our planet doesn’t seem to be the result of anything very special.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Result

• What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars.

  Murray Gell-Mann

• We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in Work

• 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

  Tags in Produce

• Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they’re never really certainties.

  Murray Gell-Mann

• So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Topics in History

• Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they’re seen by their gravitational effect.

  Murray Gell-Mann

• 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

  Tags in Condition

• Now, what that means is that there is fundamental indeterminacy from quantum mechanics, but besides that there are other sources of effective indeterminacy.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Tags in Fundamentals

• In fact any experiment that measures a quantum effect is one in which the quantum effect is aligned with the behavior of some heavy, macroscopic object; that’s how we measure it.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Tags in Measure

• If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Tags in Fundamentals

Murray Gell-Mann (26)

Birth:	15th September, 1929
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Physicist

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