Leon Lederman Quotes & Sayings

By the grace of AEC, BNL, God, Green and Hayworth (alphabetical order), we should see neutrinos. — Leon M. Lederman

Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money. — Leon M. Lederman

Democritus's work on the void was revolutionary. — Leon M. Lederman

Theorists write all the popular books on science: Heinz Pagels, Frank Wilczek, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, et al. And why not? They have all that spare time. — Leon M. Lederman

I'm so old I can remember when the Dead Sea was only sick. — Leon M. Lederman

Science is not about status quo. It's about revolution. — Leon M. Lederman

He [Democritus] is probably best known for two of the most scientifically intuitive quotes ever uttered by an ancient: 'Nothing exists except atoms and space, everything else is opinion' ... — Leon M. Lederman

Neutrinos ... win the minimalist contest: zero charge, zero radius, and very possibly zero mass. — Leon M. Lederman

Those who do not stop asking silly questions become scientists. — Leon M. Lederman

When I talk about the pain and hardship of a scientist's life, I'm speaking of more than existential angst. Galileo's work was condemned by the Church; Madame Curie paid with her life, a victim of leukemia wrought by radiation poisoning. Too many of us develop cataracts. None of us gets enough sleep. Most of what we know about the universe we know thanks to a lot of guys (and ladies) who stayed up late at night. — Leon M. Lederman

One hundred thirty-seven is the inverse of something called the fine-structure constant ... The most remarkable thing about this remarkable number is that it is dimension-free ... Werner Heisenberg once proclaimed that all the quandaries of quantum mechanics would shrivel up when 137 was finally explained. — Leon M. Lederman

One of the major ingredients for professional success in science is luck. Without this, forget it. — Leon M. Lederman

Experimenters don't come in late - they never went home. — Leon M. Lederman

I feel emotionally conflicted. It's like when your mother in-law drives off a cliff in your new Porsche. — Leon M. Lederman

We hope to explain the entire universe in a single, simple formula that you can wear on your T-shirt. — Leon M. Lederman

Where do we stand today compared to Greece circa 400 B.C.? Today's experiment-driven 'standard model' is not all that dissimilar to Democritus's speculative [sic] atomic theory. — Leon M. Lederman

That name was a kind of joke, and not a very good one. An author, Leon Lederman, wanted to call it 'that goddamn particle' because it was clear it was going to be a tough job finding it experimentally. His editor wouldn't have that, and he said, 'okay, call it the God particle,' and the editor accepted it. I don't think he should've have done, because it's so misleading'. — Peter Higgs

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ... — Leon M. Lederman

Particle physics suffers more from being infected by the socio-political mood of the day than from lack of spectacular opportunities for major and profound discoveries. — Leon M. Lederman

My children have often asked me why I never received a Nobel Prize. I used to tell them it was because the Nobel committee couldn't make up its mind which of my projects to recognize. — Leon M. Lederman

Science should have no less lofty a goal. My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt. — Leon M. Lederman

The aether: Invented by Isaac Newton, reinvented by James Clerk Maxwell. This is the stuff that fills up the empty space of the universe. Discredited and discarded by Einstein, the aether is now making a Nixonian comeback. It's really the vacuum, but burdened by theoretical, ghostly particles. — Leon M. Lederman

During an intense period of lab work, the outside world vanishes and the obsession is total. Sleep is when you can curl up on the accelerator floor for an hour. — Leon M. Lederman

Theorists tend to peak at an early age; the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen-or so it seems. They need to know just enough; when they're young they haven't accumulated the intellectual baggage. — Leon M. Lederman

I started out as a molecules kid. In high school and early college I loved chemistry, but I gradually shifted toward physics, which seemed cleaner - odorless, in fact. — Leon M. Lederman

The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away. — Leon M. Lederman

I sometimes think about the tower at Pisa as the first particle accelerator, a (nearly) vertical linear accelerator that Galileo used in his studies. — Leon M. Lederman