I don't believe that when you are 25 you are over the hill. Fifty is the new 30.
My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.
Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules. . . Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
The melded nature of space and time is intimately woven with properties of light speed. The inviolable nature of the speed of light is actually, in Einstein's hands, talking about the inviolable nature of cause and effect.
Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.
The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.
Science is very good at answering the 'how' questions. 'How did the universe evolve to the form that we see?' But it is woefully inadequate in addressing the 'why' questions. 'Why is there a universe at all?' These are the meaning questions, which many people think religion is particularly good at dealing with.
There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.
The price for living the life I have -- for any serious, devoted person, is that at times one must live alone, or feel alone. I think loneliness is associated in many people's minds when they think about success.
. . . and the cries of the birds and the uproar of the monkeys became more and more remote, and the world became eternally sad. The men on the expedition felt overwhelmed by their most ancient memories in that paradise of dampness and silence, going back to before original sin, as their boots sank into pools of steaming oil and their machetes destroyed bloody lilies and golden salamanders.
Could there be a greater proof of our cowardice than fighting amongst ourselves?