Top 60 Arthur Stanley Eddington Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. ”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

Featured in: Space Quotes

2. “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what-that is what our theory amounts to.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

3. “A hundred thousand million Stars make one Galaxy; A hundred thousand million Galaxies make one Universe. The figures may not be very trustworthy, but I think they give a correct impression.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

4. “Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

5. “I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

6. “Time is the supreme Law of nature.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

7. “In Einstein’s theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

8. “There is no space without aether, and no aether which does not occupy space.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

9. “The pursuit of truth in science transcends national boundaries. It takes us beyond hatred and anger and fear. It is the best of us.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

10. “An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

11. “If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

12. “The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

13. “It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

14. “Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

15. “If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

16. “The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

17. “Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

18. “Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

19. “In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of nature, time occupies the key position.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

20. “Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

21. “The word reality frightens me.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

22. “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

23. “Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

24. “So far as physics is concerned, time’s arrow is a property of entropy alone.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

25. “I believe there are 15, 747, 724, 136, 275, 002, 577, 605, 653, 961, 181, 555, 468, 044, 717, 914, 527, 116, 709, 366, 231, 425, 076, 185, 631, 031, 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

26. “Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

27. “Don’t believe the results of experiments until they’re confirmed by theory.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

28. “Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

29. “We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because ‘two’ is ‘one and one.’ We forget that we still have to make a study of ‘and.’”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

30. “It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

31. “Schrodinger’s wave-mechanics is not a physical theory but a dodge-and a very good dodge too.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

32. “Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

33. “Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn’t.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

34. “It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

35. “Falling in love is one of the activities forbidden that tiresome person, the consistently reasonable man.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

36. “For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

37. “It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

38. “When an investigator has developed a formula which gives a complete representation of the phenomena within a certain range, he may be prone to satisfaction. Would it not be wiser if he should say ‘Foiled again! I can find out no more about Nature along this line.’”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

39. “The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

40. “We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

41. “You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

42. “What is possible in the Cavendish Laboratory may not be too difficult in the sun.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

43. “Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

44. “The helium which we handle must have been put together at some time and some place. We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

45. “The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

46. “I don’t believe any experiment until it is confirmed by theory. I find this is a witty inversion of “conventional” wisdom.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

47. “Never accept a fact until it has been verified by theory.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

48. “Who will observe the observers?”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

49. “We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

50. “Our ultimate analysis of space leads us not to a “here” and a “there,” but to an extension such as that which relates “here” and “there.” To put the conclusion rather crudely-space is not a lot of points close together; it is a lot of distances interlocked.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington