A Quote by Nikola Tesla

I never have, above my signature, announced anything that I did not prove first. That is the reason why no statement of mine was ever contradicted, and I do not think it will be, because whenever I publish something I go through it first by experiment, then from experiment I calculate, and when I have the theory and practice meet I announce the results.

Nikola Tesla

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Quote Author

Nikola Tesla
American - Inventor
July 10, 1856 - January 7, 1943

Theory said one thing and the experiment said something different, so that was the stimulus that started me going, that there was something there to be explained, which wasn't understood and to try to see why that experiment gave the answer it did, so it was a big opportunity for a young student starting to have actually an experiment which contradicted the theory, so that's was my chance to understand that.

Freeman Dyson

The TV scientist who mutters sadly, "The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for," is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't prove anything one way or another.

Robert M. Pirsig

If you're a physicist, for heaven's sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn't agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory.

Ivar Giaever

I took Alexey Brodovitch course at the New School. He taught me something that I've always remembered: After we did the initial assignment, he contradicted what he had said the first week, and I said, "Okay." The next week, he contradicted what he had said the second week. We went through 10 weeks of contradicting, and I thought maybe he was drunk. At the end, he said, "You may think I've contradicted myself, but there's no one way to do anything."

Jerry Schatzberg

Libertarian immigration policy would be an experiment in which I don't think we should participate. We should not bet the republic that the results will be good. I suspect the results would be a disaster and the end of the American experiment.

Jan C. Ting

Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment , for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions.

Stephen Jay Gould

Experiment is actually doing the art. That's the experiment and then you get to experience the experiment.

Robert Glasper

A scientist... must accept the results of experiment, and nothing but the results of experiment.

Frank Tipler

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

Manfred Eigen

It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.

Paul Dirac

You all have learned reliance On the sacred teachings of Science, So I hope, through life, you will never decline In spite of philistine Defiance To do what all good scientists do. Experiment. Make it your motto day and night. Experiment. And it will lead you to the light.

Cole Porter

The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an exorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says "yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will some day experience its "No" - most theories, soon after conception.

Albert Einstein

I don't have anything to prove ever, ever in my life. If I have something to prove, what does that mean for everyone else? And I think everyone should have that attitude. You just have to prove to yourself that you can go out there and be the best that you can be and not prove anything to anyone.

Serena Williams

What is the fundamental hypothesis of science, the fundamental philosophy? We stated it in the first chapter: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment. ... If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well, but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see, and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.

Richard P. Feynman

It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.