Murray Gell-Mann

“Hugh Everett's work has been described by many people in terms of many worlds, the idea being that every one of the various alternative histories, branching histories, is assigned some sort of reality.”

“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.”

“אם הרחקתי ראות, הרי זה משום שהייתי מוקף בגמדים.”

“העבודה שלנו היא בילוי מהנה.”

“כתוב את הבעיה, התרכז וחשוֹב קשה, כתוב את הפתרון.”

“למרות ש[מערכות מורכבות] שונות מאוד בתכונות הפיזיות שלהן, הן דומות זו לזו באופן שבו הן מטפלות במידע. מאפיין משותף זה הוא אולי נקודת ההתחלה הטובה ביותר לחקר אופן פעולתן.”

“להשיג משהו נוסף. זו המשמעות של התהוות.”

“Well, I don't like to get involved in these philosophical issues very much.”

“What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature.”

“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.”

“Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties.”

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

“I do not keep up with the details of particle physics.”

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

“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.”