M Theory Witten Quotes & Sayings

It's an exaggeration to say that I came up with M-theory. — Edward Witten

So far I've always kept my diet secret but now I might as well tell everyone what it is. Lots of grapefruit throughout the day and plenty of virile young men. — Angie Dickinson

Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature. — Edward Witten

It inspired all sorts of whims and fancies that I ultimately wove into a fairy tale complete with muse, the earth, the moon, some famous inventors, a dog and a rabbit. — Kit Williams

String theory is 21 st century physics that fell accidentally into the 20th century. — Edward Witten

The nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. — Barack Obama

We have one real candidate for changing the rules; this is string theory. In string theory the one-dimensional trajectory of a particle in spacetime is replaced by a two-dimensional orbit of a string. Such strings can be of any size, but under ordinary circumstances they are quite tiny, ... a value determined by comparing the predictions of the theory for Newton's constant and the fine structure constant to experimental values. — Edward Witten

The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person. — Chuck Palahniuk

it was not so much the new machines that revolutionized the world, impressive and important as they were. The truly heroic invention was the economic, social, and political institutions in which these machines were embedded. — Sven Beckert

If I take the theory as we have it now, literally, I would conclude that extra dimensions really exist. They're part of nature. We don't really know how big they are yet, but we hope to explore that in various ways. — Edward Witten

I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes. — Edward Witten

Technically you need the extra dimensions. At first people didn't like them too much, but they've got a big benefit, which is that the ability of string theory to describe all the elementary particles and their forces along with gravity depends on using the extra dimensions. — Edward Witten

Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle. — Edward Witten

Tomorrow you're all going to wake up in a brave new world, a world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones, created in a stem-cell research lab run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags. Where tax-and-spend Democrats take all your hard-earned money and use it to buy electric cars for National Public Radio, and teach evolution to illegal immigrants. Oh, and everybody's high! — Stephen Colbert

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string. — Edward Witten

So when you ask me how string theory might be tested, I can tell you what's likely to happen at accelerators or some parts of the theory that are likely to be tested. — Edward Witten

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. LaoTzu. Just make sure that you step in the right direction. — Lao-Tzu

God is a cluster of neurons. — Margaret Atwood

I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don't believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world. — Edward Witten

One very important aspect of string theory is definitely testable. That was the prediction of supersymmetry, which emerged from string theory in the early '70s. — Edward Witten

I represented many of these kids as they become young adults in the criminal justice system when I was a public defender. One way of reaching out is by the mind of experimentation. — Matt Gonzalez

The theory has to be interpreted that extra dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions the three spatial dimensions plus time are sufficiently small that they haven't been observed yet. — Edward Witten

On the other hand, we don't understand the theory too completely, and because of this fuzziness of spacetime, the very concept of spacetime and spacetime dimensions isn't precisely defined. — Edward Witten

There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change. — Edward Witten