RIP Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg 3 May 1933 – 23 July 2021. One of the giants of physics.

A Few selected steven weinberg quotes

• [On the Fakebook effect] – “All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically”
• [On magic] – “Sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary”
• [On knowledge] – “This is one of the great social functions of science – to free people from superstition”
• [On “experts”] – “An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy”
• [On human purpose] – “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy”
• [On nuclear proliferation] – “It’s very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn’t pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defence system”
• [Light-hearted] – “It does not matter whether you win or lose, what matters is whether I win or lose!”
• [On religion] – “Science doesn’t make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible not to believe in God”
• [On belief] – “Whatever faith you have you ought to be willing to confront it with the discoveries of science. There’s something ignoble about not being willing to look at what we’ve found about the way the world is and trying to reconcile it with whatever you’ve decided to believe in for yourself”
• [On Socialism] – “If any one idea can justly be called the American idea, it is that a child’s circumstances at birth should not determine the station in life that that child will occupy as an adult”
• [On Capitalism] – “One thing that is clearly not maximised by free markets is equality. I am talking not about that pale substitute for equality known as equality of opportunity but about equality itself”
• [On theoretical physics] – “A theorist today is hardly considered respectable if he or she has not introduced at least one new particle for which there is no experimental evidence”
• [And finally…] – “Whatever the final laws of nature may be, there is no reason to suppose that they are designed to make physicists happy.”