Arthur Eddington

“Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.”

“It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.”

“Something unknown is doing we don't know what.”

“Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.”

“We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.”

“Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter.”

“Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.”

“We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.”

“We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'”

“It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.”

“The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.”

“If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.”

“Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.”

“It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.”

“If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

“The mathematics is not there till we put it there.”

“It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control.”

“It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.”

“Who will observe the observers?”

“We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.”