It is perhaps difficult sufficiently to emphasise Seeking without disp — Arthur Eddington

"If to-day you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the æther or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised. … this newer outlook has modified the challenge from the material to the spiritual world."

"We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place."

"I think that science would never have achieved much progress if it had always imagined unknown obstacles hidden round every corner. At least we may peer gingerly round the corner, and perhaps we shall find there is nothing very formidable after all."

"There once was a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said, "It appears That in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune"."

"A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown to us. This reservoir can scarcely be other than the sub-atomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn to release it and use it for his service. The store is well-nigh inexhaustible, if only it could be tapped."

"Physics has in the main contented itself with studying the abridged edition of the book of nature."