Ivar Quotes & Sayings

Whether these characters are lovable or detestable, they're lovable or detestable in a TV way - defined by a minimal set of traits that are endlessly reiterated and incapable of expansion or alteration, a fixed loop. — Jonathan Rosenbaum

I'm a skeptic ... Global Warming it's become a new religion. You're not supposed to be against Global Warming. You have basically no choice. And I tell you how many scientists support that. But the number of scientists is not important. The only thing that's important is if the scientists are correct; that's the important part. — Ivar Giaever

Science is to find something unknown, while invention is to make something new out of the known theory. — Ivar Giaever

After all, you don't know how strong something is until you actually test it." She winked. "I read that in a fortune cookie once." "Fortune cookie? — Nicholas Sparks

You need to be curious, competitive, creative, stubborn, self-confident, skeptical, patient and be lucky to win a Nobel. — Ivar Giaever

872, Ivar, King of the Northmen of all Ireland and Britain , ended his life." He had conquered Mercia and East Anglia. He had captured the major stronghold of the kingdom of Strathclyde, Dumbarton. Laden with loot and seemingly invincible, he settled in Dublin and died there peacefully two years later. The pious chroniclers report that he "slept in Christ." Thus it may be that he had the best of both worlds. — Winston Churchill

Is climate change pseudoscience? If I'm going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely. — Ivar Giaever

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism. — George Santayana

One of the things that Ivar knew about Mrs. Walker was that she would only tell him what she knew if he asked the right question, so he spent a portion of his time meditating over what he might ask Mrs. Walker and how he might phrase the question. — Jane Smiley

I am now about to enter on my normal condition. For people are almost always in their graves. When we survey the long race of men, it is strange and still more strange to find that they are mainly dead men, who have scarcely ever been otherwise. — Thomas Hardy

Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don't really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money. — Ivar Giaever

In 869 we have an event which rapidly achieved almost mythic status in English Christian folklore: the horrible martyrdom of King Edmund of East Anglia by the appalling Ivar the Boneless, who according to some traditions brought a great Viking army to England in pursuit of revenge for the killing of his father, the semi-legendary Ragnar Lothbrok, executed by the king of Northumbria. — Heather O'Donoghue

To me the greatest moment in an experiment is always just before I learn whether the particular idea is a good or a bad one. Thus even a failure is exciting, and most of my ideas have of course been wrong. — Ivar Giaever

Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever reminds us that "in pseudoscience you begin with a hypothesis which is very appealing to you, and then you only look for things which confirm the hypothesis". — Mark Steyn

If you want to do good research, it's important not to know too much. This almost sounds contradictory but really if you know too much and you get an idea, you will sort of talk yourself out of trying it because you figure it won't work. But if you know just the right amount and you get enthusiastic about your project, you go ahead, you do it and if you're lucky things'll work out. — Ivar Giaever

There are 15 main theories in physics, and we know all of them. If there weren't a finite number of theories, there would not be a point to physics. — Ivar Giaever

You never know. It's just. It's like. POOF. And you're gone. — John Green

If they can't learn the way we teach, we teach the way they learn. — Ole Ivar Lovaas

I am a skeptic ... Global warming has become a new religion. — Ivar Giaever

The only thing that stops you from from success is fear of the unknown — Thabiso Monkoe

No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown. — Dean Koontz

Understanding truth is the primary objective of science, not doing good for the world. — Ivar Giaever

If you're a physicist, for heaven's sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn't agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory. — Ivar Giaever

The God of Imagination lived in fairytales. And the best fairytales made you fall in love. It was while flicking through "Sleeping Beauty" that I met my first love, Ivar. He was a six-year-old bello ragazzo with blond hair and eyebrows. He had bomb-blue eyes and his two front teeth were missing.
The road to Happily Ever After, however, was paved with political barbed wire. Three things stood in my way.
1. The object of my affection didn't know he was the object of my affection.
2. The object of my affection preferred Action Man to Princess Aurora.
3. The object of my affection was a boy and I wasn't allowed to love a boy. — Diriye Osman

Unrestrained automobility, hedonism, individualism, and conspicuous consumption cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. A spiritually impoverished world cannot be sustained because meaninglessness, anomie, and despair will corrode the desire to be sustained and the belief that humanity is worth sustaining. But these are the very things that distinguish the modern age from its predecessors, Genuine sustainability, in other words, will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process akin to humankind growing up to a fuller stature. — David W. Orr

If I have learned anything as a scientist, it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do. — Ivar Giaever

Swedes, we are not - Russians, we do not want to become ... so let us be Finnish. — Adolf Ivar Arwidsson

There are just two things you can do to win a Nobel prize - have a good idea and pursue it effectively. — Ivar Giaever

You know, you could live a thousand lifetimes and not deserve him. — Suzanne Collins

It's cold out there, colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theatre on a Saturday night. — Tom Waits

I would say that, basically, global warming is a non-problem. — Ivar Giaever

If you want to help Africa, you should help them out of poverty, not try to build solar cells and windmills. — Ivar Giaever

While classical mechanics correctly predicts the behavior of large objects such as tennis balls, to predict the behavior of small objects such as electrons, we must use quantum mechanics. — Ivar Giaever

When I was 28 years old, I found myself in Schenectady, New York, where I discovered that it was possible for some people to make a good living as physicists. — Ivar Giaever

'Incontrovertible' is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science. — Ivar Giaever

I don't really know what the future of science is. Maybe we have come to the end of science; maybe science is a finite field. The inventions resulting from this finite field, however, are boundless. — Ivar Giaever

Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away, they themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor. — William Kamkwamba

He died without cutting his nails, she said accusingly, as if I was responsible for that ill luck, and it was bad fortune indeed because now the grim things of the underworld would use Ivar's nails to build the ship that would bring chaos at the world's end. — Bernard Cornwell

My own beliefs are that the road to a scientific discovery is seldom direct and that it does not necessarily require great expertise. In fact, I am convinced that often a newcomer to a field has a great advantage because he is ignorant and does not know all the complicated reasons why a particular experiment should not be attempted. — Ivar Giaever