“Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare.”
Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress
Kenneth Tynan, "Greta Garbo," Sight and Sound (April 1954), republished in Profiles (1990), p. 80
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s
Context: Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
“Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare.”
Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress
Kenneth Tynan, "Greta Garbo," Sight and Sound (April 1954), republished in Profiles (1990), p. 80
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist
Rejoinder when told that he couldn't talk about physics, because "nobody [at this table] knows anything about it."
Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake", p. 310.
Quoted in Handbook of Economic Growth (2005) by Philippe Aghion and Steven N. Durlauf.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment
Elements de la géométrie de l'infini (1727) as quoted by Amir R. Alexander, Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of Mathematical Practice (2002) citing Michael S. Mahoney, "Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Late Seventeenth Century" in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman (1990)
“In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment.”
Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 5, Harvard Years, p. 95
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)
Carlo Beenakker (1960) Dutch physicist
In Interview with Professor Carlo Beenakker http://www.natuurkunde.nl/artikelen/view.do?supportId=822985. Interviewers: Ramy El-Dardiry and Roderick Knuiman (February 1, 2006).
“So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton’s equations, are reversible.”
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist
volume I; lecture 46, "Ratchet and Pawl"; section 46-5, "Order and entropy"; p. 46-8
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
Gregory Chaitin (1947) Argentinian mathematician and computer scientist
"Epistemology as information theory: From Leibniz to Omega." https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0506552 arXiv preprint math/0506552 (2005). p. 3
Graham Sutton (1903–1977) Welsh scientist
Mathematics in Action (1954) page 3
Donald Miller (1971) American writer
Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)