“Physicists cannot explain atoms to their children, not because we are ignorant but because we know too much.”
Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 10, Quantum Realities: Four More, p. 197
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Nick Herbert 23
American physicist 1936Related quotes

Young India (24 September 1931); also in Teachings Of Mahatma Gandhi (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, p. 458 archive.org https://archive.org/stream/teachingsofmahat029222mbp#page/n463/mode/2up
1930s
Context: It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.

“Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.”
Source: Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
As quoted in "Stray Questions for: David Eagleman" by Blake Wilson in The New York Times (10 July 2009) http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/stray-questions-for-david-eagleman/
Context: Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I’m hoping to define a new position — one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.

quoted in Professional Amateur: The Biography Of Charles Franklin Kettering, Thomas Alvin Boyd, 1957 page 106 ( Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/professionalamat013190mbp)

L'Ami du peuple, no.559 (1791-08-27)

As quoted in Good Advice (1993) by William Safire, p. 125