Nilotpal Sanyal

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."

"A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street."

"The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason."

"No, no, you are not thinking, you are just being logical."

"I speak from my present level of ignorance. The more you know, the more ignorant you become, because ignorance grows exponentially - the more answers you get, the more new questions arise."

"It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?""

"If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that nature does not know it!"

"It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity."

"All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking."

"Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent."

"The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between."

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music."

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution."

"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it."

"Let's go and get drunk on light again -- it has the power to console."

"True philosophers are always occupied in the practice of dying."

"My religion is not deceiving myself."

"Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is and you must bend to its power or live a lie."

"It is not length of life, but depth of life."

"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny."