Hannes Quotes & Sayings

She was spontaneous. Even in her cleverness. She never looked at people; people looked at her. It was her reward for being natural. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research. — Hannes Alfven

I'm a really sensitive person. I cry if I miss a cab. I've always worn my emotions on my sleeve. I think it makes life so much better when you can talk about anything. — Michael Keaton

A child doesn't understand a hammer until he's mashed his finger at a nail.
Get up and stop whining, maggot! You have forgotten the face of your father! — Stephen King

Emotional quotient is far more important than intelligence quotient. We live with people, not with math problems. — Saru Singhal

What we seem to perceive influences what we feel, and what we feel influences what we say we perceive — Jenefer Robinson

I knew that, although my life had been shaped by events out of my control, it was I who had chosen to react to them in the way I had — Lucinda Riley

Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. [An infinitely old universe, always evolving may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end.] Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science. — Hannes Alfven

Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory. — Hannes Alfven

We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect. — Hannes Alfven

I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals, but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals.
[Referring to the trouble he had with the peer reviewers of Anglo-American astrophysical journals because his ideas often conflicted with the generally accepted or "standard"" theories.] — Hannes Alfven

To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science. — Hannes Alfven

Overnight our place was busting its seams with idiotics. Anything went, and every fool thing you might think of under the influence of hashish or a hangover went big. We were awash with pretty women, clowns, and storytellers who couldn't write. We made a million dollars so fast my fingers ached from trying to count. — Greg Merritt

Titles are very hard. Sometimes a title comes before I start to write the book, but often I finish the book, and I still don't have a title. I have to go through the book again, and then sometimes I hope a title jumps out at me from what I've written. — Eve Bunting

In order to understand the phenomena in a certain plasma region, it is necessary to map not only the magnetic but also the electric field and the electric currents. Space is filled with a network of currents which transfer energy and momentum over large or very large distances. The currents often pinch to filamentary or surface currents. The latter are likely to give space, as also interstellar and intergalactic space, a cellular structure. — Hannes Alfven

There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago. — Hannes Alfven

I have always believed that astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present universe and work our way backward to progressively more remote and uncertain epochs. — Hannes Alfven

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture. — Hannes Alfven

Tell me what time you spend alone with God ...
and I'll tell you how spiritual you are. — Leonard Ravenhill

Let him that hath no power of patience retire within himself, though even there he will have to put up with himself. — Baltasar Gracian

You really need better spatial awareness." A familiar, deep voice from behind her made her jump out of her skin.
Feeling almost numb, she turned to find Graysen West standing there - and looking way too sexy for his own good. Or for her own good. She'd thought she was completely alone in the elevator.
She blinked once. Yep, he was still there. Well over six feet of raw masculinity, bright blue eyes she could drown in, and a disapproving frown that somehow made him look sexy.
Isa felt almost possessed as she lashed out. A year of built-up anger and hurt came bursting to the surface. Her arm was moving before she'd processed what she was doing but when her fist connected with his nose, she cursed at the pain that jolted through her hand. Punching someone hurt. — Katie Reus

Gravitational systems are the ashes of prior electrical systems. — Hannes Alfven

We take no pleasure in permitted joys,
But what's forbidden is more keenly sought. — Ovid

The technologists claim that if everything works [in a nuclear fission reactor] according to their blueprints, fission energy will be a safe and very attractive solution to the energy needs of the world ... The real issue is whether their blueprints will work in the real world and not only in a "technological paradise." ... Opponents of fission energy point out a number of differences between the real world and the "technological paradise." ... No acts of God can be permitted. — Hannes Alfven

Neither our vices nor our virtues further the poem. — William Dunbar

Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy. — Hannes Alfven

The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases. — Bill Ayers

And suddenly everything was pure sound. I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn't just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. Will hadn't described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. And — Jojo Moyes

I have never thought that you could obtain the extremely clumpy, heterogeneous universe we have today, strongly affected by plasma processes, from the smooth, homogeneous one of the Big Bang, dominated by gravitation. — Hannes Alfven