The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Traditionally scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given ' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.

For me science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.

Without renouncing the support of physics it is possible for the physiology of the senses not only to pursue its own course of development but also to afford to physical science itself powerful assistance.

I think it's science and physics are just starting to learn from all these experiments. These experiments have been carried out hundreds and hundreds of times in all sorts of ways that no physicist really questions the end point. I think that these experiments are very clearly telling us that consciousness is limitless and the ultimate reality.

Today's preoccupation with physical theories of everything takes a wrong turn from the purpose of science - to question all things relentlessly. Modern physics has become like Swift's kingdom of Laputa flying absurdly on an island above the earth and indifferent to what is beneath.

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.

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.

Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods but a new metaphysics can rescue us.

In science there is only physics all the rest is stamp collecting.

I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle which is a bunch of crap.

I like science fiction and physics things like that. Planets being sucked into black holes and the various vortexes that create possibility and what happens on the other side of the black hole. To me it's the microcosmic study of the macrocosmic universe in man and that's why I'm attracted to it.

Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist.

I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects but I think I was a pretty good student.

The violent reaction on the recent development of modern physics can only be understood when one realises that here the foundations of physics have started moving and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from science.

We have failed to protect science against speculative extensions of nature continuing to assign physical and mathematical properties to hypothetical entities beyond what is observable in nature.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.

The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

Biology is now bigger than physics as measured by the size of budgets by the size of the workforce or by the output of major discoveries and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

I wanted to be a dancer my whole life. And when I gave it up to act I always had a really sad part of myself that missed it and missed performing and missed being physical in that way.

Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You've got to be careful.