Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No, I'm the infamous Edward Teller.
Today's science is tomorrow's technology.
Physics without mathematics is meaningless.
I am guilty of the great crime of optimism.
The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses.
Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.
Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.
The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.
When you're certain you cannot be fooled, you become easy to fool.
Two paradoxes are better than one they may even suggest a solution.
Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.
U.S. has lost a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor.
There's no system foolproof enough to defeat a sufficiently great fool.
If anyone wants a hole in the ground, nuclear explosives can make big holes
Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.
In our educational institutions applied science may almost be described as a "no-man's land."
I hate doubt, yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worth believing in.
I think that intellectuals who end up in hell will have to read page proofs and check indexes there.
No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.
We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.
I tried to contribute to the defeat of the Soviets. If I contributed 1%, it is 1% of something enormous.
Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors.
The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.
There is no case where ignorance should be preferred to knowledge - especially if the knowledge is terrible.
If not for me, the H-bomb would have been developed in Russia first. In the U.S., we'd now be speaking Russian.
The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to EMOTIONALLY comprehend the exponential function.
A state-of-the-art calculation requires 100 hours of CPU time on the state-of-the-art computer, independent of the decade.
Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.
Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.
[Chemistry] laboratory work was my first challenge. ... I still carry the scars of my first discovery-that test-tubes are fragile.
Could we have avoided the tragedy of Hiroshima? Could we have started the atomic age with clean hands? No one knows. No one can find out.
Society's emissions of carbon dioxide may or may not turn out to have something significant to do with global warming-the jury is still out.
I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by talking about it.
I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.
My experience has been in a short 77 years that in the end when you fight for a desperate cause and have good reasons to fight, you usually win.
When Columbus took off, the purpose was to improve trade relations with China. That problem has not been solved to this very day, but just look at the by-products.
There is a time for scientists and movie stars and those who have flown the atlantic to restrain their opinions lest they be taken more seriously than they should be.
I believe in excellence. It is a basic need of every human soul. All of us can be excellent, because, fortunately, we are exceedingly diverse in our ambitions and talents.
I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.
In the theater you create a moment, but in that moment, there is a touch, a twinkle of eternity. And not just eternity, but community. . . . That connection is a sense of life for me.
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
Really exotic methods of propulsion . . . will have to be devised to get there. How it will be done, I do not know. Whether it will be done, I am not quite certain. But I would bet it can be done.
One may say that predictions are dangerous particularly for the future. If the danger involved in a prediction is not incurred, no consequence follows and the uncertainty principle is not violated.
If there ever was a misnomer, it is "exact science." Science has always been full of mistakes. The present day is no exception. And our mistakes are good mistakes; they require a genius to correct. Of course, we do not see our own mistakes.
When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
By having simplified what is known, physicists have been led into realms which as yet are anything but simple. That at some time, they, too, will appear as simple consequences of a theory of which no one has yet dreamed is not a statement of fact.It is a statement of faith.
It is often claimed that knowledge multiplies so rapidly that nobody can follow it. I believe this is incorrect. At least in science it is not true. The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler. This, of course, goes contrary to what everyone accepts.
Knowing he [Bob Serber] was going to the [first atom bomb] test, I asked him how he planned to deal with the danger of rattlesnakes. He said, 'I'll take along a bottle of whiskey.' … I ended by asking, 'What would you do about those possibilities [of what unknown phenomena might cause a nuclear explosion to propagate in the atmosphere]?' Bob replied, 'Take a second bottle of whiskey.'
Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.