🚀 go-pugleaf

Here are some of my favorites. I don't have any references to when or where
these were spoken/written. In fact, it may be that some of them are
inaccurate. But they are fun.

****

I do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
      -- E. Schrodinger [on quantum mechanics]
 
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics
cannot possibly have understood it.
	-- Niels Bohr
 
  Surely, Professor Bohr, you do not really believe that a horseshoe over
the entrance to a home brings good luck?
  No, I certainly do not believe in this superstition. But you know, they
say it brings luck even if you don't believe in it.
      -- A house visitor and Niels Bohr
 
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
	-- Albert Einstein
 
But in physics I soon learned to scent out the paths that led to the
depths, and to disregard everything else, all the many things that
clutter up the mind, and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this
was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's
mind for the examination, whether one liked it or not.
	-- Albert Einstein
 
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you
that mine are still greater.
      -- Albert Einstein
 
Oh, that Einstein, always skipping lectures....I certainly never would
have thought he could do it.
	-- Herman Minkowski
 
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations,
for Nature cannot be fooled. 
     -- Richard P. Feynman
 
The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment.
       -- Richard P. Feynman
 
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
 
By nature I am peacefully inclined and reject all doubtful adventures.
But a theoretical interpretation had to be found at all costs, no matter
how high . . . I was ready to sacrifice every one of my previous 
convictions about physical laws.
      -- Max Planck

****
Erik Reuter, e-reuter@uiuc.edu

In article <1992Apr14.132650.4847@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> eer36024@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Erik Reuter) writes:
>
>I do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
>      -- E. Schrodinger [on quantum mechanics]
> 

The quotation, according to John Bell (he doesn't say where he got it), is

If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I
ever got involved.

from Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics (Cambridge, Cambridge,
1987) p. 201.

---Jon

Quoting from Paul Arthur Schilpp's translation of A. Einstein's autobiography:

"Even when I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes 
and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my 
consciousness with considerable vitality.  Moreover, I soon discovered the 
cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered 
up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today.  By the mere 
existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. 
Moreover, it was possible to satisfy the stomach by such participation, but 
not man in so far as he is a thinking and feeling being. 

"A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises 
is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended 
is its area of applicability.

"It [thermodynamics] is the only physical theory of universal content 
concerning which I am convinced that, within the framework of the 
applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown....

[discussing the origins of special relativity in his search for a universal 
priciple as basic as that behind thermodynamics] "After ten years of 
reflection such a principle resulted from a paradox upon which I had 
already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with the 
velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam 
as a spatially oscillatory electromagnetic field at rest.  However, there 
appears to be no such thing, whether on the basis of experience or 
according to Maxwell's equations. 

"Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought 
independently of its being observed.

"It is my opinion that the contemporary quantum theory by means of certain 
definitely laid down basic concepts, which on the whole have been taken 
over from classical mechanics, constitutes an optimum formulation of the 
connections.  I believe, however, that this theory offers no useful point 
of departure for future development.

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)