Cherukupalli Chandrasekhar Quotes

#1. Macroscopic objects, as we see them all around us, are governed by a variety of forces, derived from a variety of approximations to a variety of physical theories. In contrast, the only elements in the construction of black holes are our basic concepts of space and time. They are, thus, almost by definition, the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe. #Quote by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

#2. For relatively small stars, the Pauli exclusion principle keeps the electrons in a star sufficiently separated to prevent the star from contracting further after it has spent its fuel. In other words, the electrons counteract the crushing gravitational force. However, for stars more than about 1.5 times the mass of the sun (a mass known as the Chandrasekhar limit), this repulsive force would not be enough to stop stellar collapse. #Quote by Clifford A. Pickover

#3. Everybody wants to make more movies. You see any movie, and it's just a feat of human strength and perseverance. It is a brutally challenging business. #Quote by Jay Chandrasekhar

#4. God is Man's greatest invention #Quote by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

#5. Something else gets under your skin, keeps you working days and nights at the sacrifice of your sleeping and eating and attention to your family and friends, something beyond the love of puzzle solving. And that other force is the anticipation of understanding something about the world that no one has ever understood before you.

Einstein wrote that when he first realized that gravity was equivalent to acceleration -- an idea that would underlie his new theory of gravity -- it was the "happiest thought of my life." On projects of far smaller weight, I have experienced that pleasure of discovering something new. It is an exquisite sensation, a feeling of power, a rush of the blood, a sense of living forever. To be the first vessel to hold this new thing.

All of the scientists I've known have at least one more quality in common: they do what they do because they love it, and because they cannot imagine doing anything else. In a sense, this is the real reason a scientist does science. Because the scientist must. Such a compulsion is both blessing and burden. A blessing because the creative life, in any endeavor, is a gift filled with beauty and not given to everyone, a burden because the call is unrelenting and can drown out the rest of life.

This mixed blessing and burden must be why the astrophysicist Chandrasekhar continued working until his mid-80's, why a visitor to Einstein's apartment in Bern found the young physicist rocking his infant wit #Quote by Alan Lightman

#6. In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as a "discovery" of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up. #Quote by Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

#7. Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better. #Quote by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

#8. Beauty is that to what the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound. #Quote by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

#9. Jessica's Daisy Dukes are even shorter than Catherine Bach's, which I honestly didn't think was possible. #Quote by Jay Chandrasekhar

#10. The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time. #Quote by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

#11. In my entire scientific life, extending over forty-five years, the most shattering experience has been the realization that an exact solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity, discovered by the New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr, provides the absolute exact representation of untold numbers of massive black holes that populate the universe. This "shuddering before the beautiful," this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature, persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound level. #Quote by Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

#12. Science is a perception of the world around us. Science is a place where what you find in nature pleases you. #Quote by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

#13. I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist. #Quote by Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

#14. I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist. #Quote by Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar