William Bragg Quotes & Sayings

Science is experimental, moving forward step-by-step, making trial and learning through success and failure. Is not this also the way of religion, and especially of the Christian religion? The writings of those who preach the religion have from the very beginning insisted that it is to be proved by experience. If a man is drawn towards honour and courage and endurance, justice, mercy, and charity, let him follow the way of Christ and find out for himself. No findings in science hinder him in that way. — William Henry Bragg

The present rate of progress [in X-ray crystallography] is determined, not so much by the lack of problems to investigate or the limited power of X-ray analysis, as by the restricted number of investigators who have had a training in the technique of the new science, and by the time it naturally takes for its scientific and technical importance to become widely appreciated. — William Lawrence Bragg

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind. — William Lawrence Bragg

Broadly speaking, the discovery of X-rays has increased the keenness of our vision ten thousand times, and we can now 'see' the individual atoms and molecules. — William Henry Bragg

Sound is a movement which is handed on from atom to atom in a gas through which the sound is passing, just as a chain of workers pass buckets of water to a fire. The quicker the workers move their hands and arms, the quicker the water moves. — William Henry Bragg

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
- Sir William Henry Bragg — William Henry Bragg

Whenever we warm our hands by the fire, we allow the energy radiated by the fire to quicken up the movements of the atoms of which the hands are composed. When we cool any substance, we check those movements. — William Henry Bragg

When a liquid boils, the temperature has been raised to such a pitch that the evaporating molecules are sufficient in number and speed to lift off the air from the surface of the liquid and push it back en masse. — William Henry Bragg

The difference between a gas and a liquid is that in the former, the atoms and molecules move to and fro in an independent existence, whereas in the latter, they are always in touch with one another, though they are changing partners continually. — William Henry Bragg

We still have too many Americans who give in to their fears of those who are different from them. Not so long ago, swastikas were painted on the doors of some African-American members of our Special Forces at Ft. Bragg. They are special forces. They do not deserve to have swastikas on their doors. — William J. Clinton

I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent. — William Lawrence Bragg

Let us think of Nature as a builder, making all that we see out of atoms of a limited number of kinds, just as the builder of a house constructs it out of so many different kinds of things: bricks, slates, planks, panes of glass, and so on. — William Henry Bragg

From religion comes a man's purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped. — William Lawrence Bragg

Light brings us the news of the Universe. — William Henry Bragg

The infinite variety in the properties of the solid materials we find in the world is really the expression of the infinite variety of the ways in which the atoms and molecules can be tied together, and of the strength of those ties. — William Henry Bragg

God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. — William Lawrence Bragg

The dividing line between the wave or particle nature of matter and radiation is the moment "Now." As this moment steadily advances through time it coagulates a wavy future into a particle past. — William Lawrence Bragg

In a gas, motion has the upper hand; the atoms are moving so fast that they have no time to enter into any sort of combination with each other: occasionally, atom must meet atom and, so to speak, each hold out vain hands to the other, but the pace is too great and, in a moment, they are far away from each other again. — William Henry Bragg

The atoms may be compared to the letters of the alphabet, which can be put together into innumerable ways to form words. So the atoms are combined in equal variety to form what are called molecules. — William Henry Bragg

After a year's research, one realizes that it could have been done in a week. — William Henry Bragg

The chemist, whose science is immediately concerned with the combinations of atoms, has rarely found it necessary to discuss their shapes, and gives them no particular forms in his diagrams. That does not mean that the shapes are unimportant, but rather that the older methods could not define them. — William Henry Bragg