"All natural phenomena, without exception, from the motions of the celestial bodies to the growth of plants and the consciousness of men […] are ultimately to be reduced to atomic mechanics." (Ernst Häckel)
"Mechanics is the paradise of mathematical science, because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Pure mathematics is not concerned with magnitude. It is merely the doctrine of notation of relatively ordered thought operations which have become mechanical." (Friederich von Hardenberg [Novalis])
"Since in the differential equations of mechanics themselves there is absolutely nothing analogous to the second law of thermodynamics the latter can be mechanically represented only by means of assumptions regarding initial conditions." (Ludwig Boltzmann)
"The laws of nature 'discovered' by science are merely mathematical or mechanical models that describe how nature behaves, not why, nor what nature 'actually' is. Science strives to find representations that accurately describe nature, not absolute truths. This fact distinguishes science from religion." (George O Abell)
"There is in mathematics, so to speak, only what we have placed there, only the clearest ideas that the human mind can form of magnitude, compared with one another and combined in an infinity of different ways, while Nature could well have used in the construction of the universe some mechanics that escapes us entirely." (Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle)
"There must be a double method for solving mechanical problems: one is the direct method founded on the laws of equilibrium or of motion; but the other one is by knowing which formula must provide a maximum or a minimum. The former way proceeds by efficient causes: both ways lead to the same solution, and it is such a harmony which convinces us of the truth of the solution, even if each method has to be separately founded on indubitable principles. But is often very difficult to discover the formula which must be a maximum or minimum, and by which the quantity of action is represented." (Leonhard Euler)
"Those few things having been considered, the whole matter is reduced to pure geometry, which is the one aim of physics and mechanics." (Gottfried W Leibniz)
"Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it." (Niels Bohr)
"What you can show using physics, forces this universe to continue to exist. As long as you're using general relativity and quantum mechanics you are forced to conclude that God exists." (Frank Tipler)
"With thermodynamics, one can calculate almost everything crudely; with kinetic theory, one can calculate fewer things, but more accurately; and with statistical mechanics, one can calculate almost nothing exactly." (Eugene P Wigner)
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