Hooft Quotes & Sayings

Quantum mechanics as it stands would be perfect if we didn't have the quantum-gravity issue and a few other very deep fundamental problems. — Gerard 't Hooft

Everything in life is made up ... You make up that you are happy. You make up that you are sad. You make up that you are in love. If you don't make up your own life, who's going to make it up for you? It's bad enough when you die and everybody can make up their own stories about you.
- Mr. Hooft — Walter Dean Myers

On your way towards becoming a bad theoretician, take your own immature theory, stop checking it for mistakes, don't listen to colleagues who do spot weaknesses, and start admiring your own infallible intelligence. — Gerard 't Hooft

Well, you have children so you know: little children little troubles, big children, big troubles - it's a saying in Yiddish. Maybe the Chinese said it too. — Grace Paley

The net that catches me when I confront traumatic events is that 10,000 years from now, they will be a reason for rejoicing. — Matt Chandler

Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again, until only a fool would not believe them. I cannot prove that electrons exist ... if you don't believe in them I have a high voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves. — Seth Lloyd

The truth was obscure, Too profound and too pure, To live it you had to explode — Bob Dylan

Tape record your parents' laughter — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

If you really want to contribute to our theoretical understanding of physical laws - and it is an exciting experience if you succeed! - there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it! — Gerard 't Hooft

See Cook [op.cit.] for a discussion of Huygens's unusual wartime visit to Cambridge and the Royal Society. His philosophical contretemps with Isaac Newton in 1675 (referenced in Society minutes as "The Great Corpuscular Debate") would mark the last significant intellectual discourse between England and the continent prior to the chaos of the Interregnum and the Annexation . . . Some Newton biographers [Winchester (1867), &c] indicate Huygens may have used his sojourn in Cambridge to access Newton's alchemical journals and that key insights derived thusly may have been instrumental to Huygens's monumental breakthrough. However, cf. Hooft [1909] and references therein for a critique of the forensic alchemy underlying this assertion. From Freeman, Thomas S., A History of the Pre-Annexation England from Hastings to the Glorious Revolution, 3 Vols. New Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1918. — Ian Tregillis

I think you might very well be the most eccentric person I've ever met. — Jandy Nelson

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men. — Plutarch

My mother was incredibly strict, especially when we moved to New York. Compared with most of the American parents, who seemed so relaxed with their children, my mother was virtually a dictator. — Mark Ronson

And women with red shoes and green handbags were never to be trusted. — Ruth Hogan

Whatsoever has exceeded its proper limit is in an unstable position. — Seneca The Younger