57 Quotes by Rainer Weiss

We live in an epoch where rational reasoning associated with evidence isn't universally accepted and is, in fact, in jeopardy. That worries me a lot.

We've seen black holes, which is already wonderful. We also expect to see the merger of neutron stars, and that was a thing that actually gave this field a certain credibility when it was discovered that there were pairs of neutron stars in our galaxy, and people stopped laughing at us when that was found out.

Experimentally, we now have demonstrated that Einstein's theory is right in strong gravitational fields. That's important to a lot of people.

Why do you do science? In this particular case, we don't have a very good reason to be doing this except for the knowledge that it brings. This research is especially important to young people. We all want to know what's going on in the universe.

One of the things I sort of dreamt about awhile ago is that if Einstein were still alive, it would be absolutely wonderful to go to him and tell him about the discovery, and he would have been very pleased, I'm sure of that.

The fact that this radiation is so penetrating - nothing stops it - makes it so you can look for things that you have never seen before, and you can look at things you know in a way that's new. That is really the big step forward.

You think Earth's gravity is really something when you're climbing the stairs. But, as far as physics goes, it is a pipsqueak, infinitesimal, tiny little effect.

We expect surprises. There has to be surprises.

There was a person who thought I was OK. I wasn't a complete dope. I got some confidence out of that.