Chandrasekhar Quotes & Sayings

I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

Beauty is that to what the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Philosophy teaches you to think big. — Jay Chandrasekhar

Science is a perception of the world around us. Science is a place where what you find in nature pleases you. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

God is Man's greatest invention — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

I am aware of the usefulness of science to society and of the benefits society derives from it. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Everybody wants to make more movies. You see any movie, and it's just a feat of human strength and perseverance. It is a brutally challenging business. — Jay Chandrasekhar

Jessica's Daisy Dukes are even shorter than Catherine Bach's, which I honestly didn't think was possible. — Jay Chandrasekhar

Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

For relatively small stars, the Pauli exclusion principle keeps the electrons in a star sufficiently separated to prevent the star from contracting further after it has spent its fuel. In other words, the electrons counteract the crushing gravitational force. However, for stars more than about 1.5 times the mass of the sun (a mass known as the Chandrasekhar limit), this repulsive force would not be enough to stop stellar collapse. — Clifford A. Pickover

In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as a "discovery" of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

All the standard equations of mathematical physics can be separated and solved in Kerr geometry. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

One may ask the question as to the extent to which the quest for beauty is an aim in the pursuit of science ... It is, indeed, an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature. What is intelligible is also beautiful. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Macroscopic objects, as we see them all around us, are governed by a variety of forces, derived from a variety of approximations to a variety of physical theories. In contrast, the only elements in the construction of black holes are our basic concepts of space and time. They are, thus, almost by definition, the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time. — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar