Philip Warren Anderson Quotes

One of our brainchildren is a still viable Science and Society course.

I acquired an admiration for Japanese culture, art, and architecture, and learned of the existence of the game of GO, which I still play.

We atheists can argue that, with the modern revolution in attitudes toward homosexuals, we have become the only group that may not reveal itself in normal social discourse.

My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance.

Of course I am not religious — I don't in fact see how any scientist who thinks at all deeply can be so.

The Nobel Prize gives one the opportunity to take public stands.

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.

The field of quantum valence fluctuations was another older interest which became much more active during this period, partly as a consequence of my own efforts.

Although raised on the farm - my grandfather was an unsuccessful fundamentalist preacher turned farmer - my father and his brother both became professors.

I have also testified repeatedly and published some articles in favor of Small Science.

A souvenir of those years is a small cottage on the cliffs of Cornwall, where Joyce and I spend a spring month every year, hiking and seeing friends.

Feynman's cryptic remark, "no one is that much smarter ...," to me, implies something Feynman kept emphasizing: that the key to his achievements was not anything "magical" but the right attitude, the focus on nature's reality, the focus on asking the right questions, the willingness to try (and to discard) unconventional answers, the sensitive ear for phoniness, self-deception, bombast, and conventional but unproven assumptions.

The first months at Harvard were more than challenging, as I came to the realization that the humanities could be genuinely interesting, and, in fact, given the weaknesses of my background, very difficult.

The years since the Nobel Prize have been productive ones for me.

The prize seemed to change my professional life very little.