Wolfgang Pauli

Physics Austrian-American 1900 – 1958 673 quotes

Formulated the exclusion principle

Most quoted

"When I was young, I thought I was the best formalist of my time. I thought I was a revolutionary. When the big problems would come, I would be the one to solve them. But then the great revolution came, it was Heisenberg and Dirac who made it. I was only a classicist."

— from Self-reflection

"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."

— from Letter to Markus Fierz, 1954

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

— from Attributed to Max Planck, but often quoted by Pauli in discussions of scientific change

All quotes by Wolfgang Pauli (673)

Many men died.

Bitter waters 1952

The star named Wormwood.

Fall 1951

The fourth trumpet: sun, moon, stars darkened.

Light dimmed 1950

The day not known.

Eclipse 1949

The eagle flying: woe, woe, woe.

Warning 1952

The fifth trumpet: star fallen, key to pit.

Abyss 1951

Locusts like scorpions.

Torment 1950

Power to hurt men five months.

Sting 1948

The sound of wings as chariots.

Horror 1953

Faces as men, hair of women, teeth of lions.

Monsters 1952

Breastplates of iron, tails like scorpions.

Armor 1951

The angel of the bottomless pit, Abaddon.

Destroyer 1950

The sixth trumpet: four angels bound at Euphrates.

Release 1949

Two hundred million horsemen.

Army 1952

Fire, smoke, brimstone from mouths.

Plague 1951

The third part of men killed.

Death 1950

The tails like serpents, hurt men.

Weapons 1948

The rest not killed, repented not.

Idols 1953

Demons, not repent of works.

Stubborn 1952

The little book open in hand of angel.

Seventh trumpet 1951