Murray Gell-Mann quotes

Murray Gell-Mann was an American physicist who made major contributions to particle physics. Best known for introducing the concept of "quarks", his work transformed our understanding of the subatomic world. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking discoveries. Here are 41 of his quotes:

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

Murray Gell-Mann

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

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

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

Murray Gell-Mann

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.

Murray Gell-Mann

Just because things get a little dingy at the subatomic level doesn't mean all bets are off.

Murray Gell-Mann

Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the "unreasonable effectiveness" of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics.

Murray Gell-Mann

Think how hard physics would be if particles could think.

Murray Gell-Mann

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

Murray Gell-Mann

I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

Murray Gell-Mann

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

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

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

But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.

Murray Gell-Mann

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

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.

Murray Gell-Mann

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

Murray Gell-Mann

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

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

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

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

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