Wolfgang Pauli Quotes

Quotes about:

• The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Levels, Physics, Achieve

  "The Historical Development of Quantum Theory". Book by Jagdish Mehra, 2000.

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• That's not right. That's not even wrong.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Science

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• God made the bulk; the surface was invented by the devil.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Devil, Made, Surface

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• Everything comes to him who knows how to wait.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Waiting, Know How, Knows

  Wolfgang Pauli (2013). “Writings on Physics and Philosophy”, p.19, Springer Science & Business Media

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• If speculative ideas can not be tested, they're not science; they don't even rise to the level of being wrong.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Ideas, Levels, Can Not

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• I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Done, Terrible, Particles

  "Foreword" by Frederick Reines to "Spaceship Neutrino" by Christine Sutton, (p. xi), 1992.

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• It is not only not right, it is not even wrong.

  Wolfgang Pauli

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• The fact that the author thinks slowly is not serious, but the fact that he publishes faster than he thinks is inexcusable.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Science, Thinking, Facts

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• What really matters for me is ... the more active role of the observer in quantum physics ... According to quantum physics the observer has indeed a new relation to the physical events around him in comparison with the classical observer, who is merely a spectator.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Science, Events, Roles

  Wolfgang Pauli (2008). “Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956”, p.148, Springer-Verlag

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• To us ... the only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality-the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical-as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously ... It would be most satisfactory of all if physis and psyche (i.e., matter and mind) could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Science, Reality, Views

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• Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Science, Comedian, Wish

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• You know, what Einstein has just said isn't so stupid.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Stupid, Said, Knows

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• The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Mean, Reality, Ideas

  "The Innermost Kernel : Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics : Wolfgang Pauli's Dialogue with C. G. Jung". Book by Suzanne Gieser, 2005.

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• Well, our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is "God does not exist and Dirac is His prophet."

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Guiding Principles, Prophet, There Is No God

  "Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversations" by Werner Heisenberg, (p. 87), 1971.

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• A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, "You look very unhappy"; whereupon I answered fiercely, "How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?".

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Beautiful, Thinking, Unhappy

  Wolfgang Pauli, Charles Paul Enz, K. v Meyenn (1988). “Wolfgang Pauli: das Gewissen der Physik”

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• I confess, that very different from you, I do find sometimes scientific inspiration in mysticism ... but this is counterbalanced by an immediate sense for mathematics.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Inspiration, Different, Sometimes

  Wolfgang Pauli (2008). “Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956”, p.148, Springer-Verlag

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• When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of 'symbolic images.' The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Attitude, Thinking, Ideas

  Letter to Markus Fierz, 1948.

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• I refuse to believe that God is a weak left-hander.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Believe, Left Handers, Weak

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• For quite a while I have set for myself the rule if a theoretician says 'universal' it just means pure nonsense.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Mean, Science, Nonsense

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• Although I have no objection to accepting the existence of relatively constant psychic contents that survive personal ego, it must always be born in mind that we have no way of knowing what these contents are actually like "as such." All we can observe is their effect on other living people, whose spiritual level and whose personal unconscious crucially influence the way these contents actually manifest themselves.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Spiritual, Psychics, Knowing

  "Atom and Archetype" edited by Carl Alfred Meier, translated by David Roscoe, 1992.

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• One shouldn't work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether any semiconductors exist.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Filthy, Mess, Semiconductors

  "Letter to Peierls". "Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg a.o. Volume II: 1930–1939" by Wolfgang Pauli, September 29, 1931.

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• How can one avoid despondency if one thinks of the anomalous Zeeman effect?

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Thinking, Despondency, Effects

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• The fact of the existence of two theories [causal and acausal] that contradict each other in Jung ... corresponds psychologically to the vascillation between 3 and 4.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Two, Facts, Jung

  Letter To Carl Alfred Meier, 1950.

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• It is always the older that emanates the new one.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Emanate

  Letter to Markus Fierz, October 13, 1951.

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• Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato , interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato , looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Plato, Men, Understanding Nature

  "Writings on Physics and Philosophy" by Wolfgang Pauli, (p. 142), 1994.

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