Wolfgang Pauli
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)
There is no God, and Pauli is his prophet.
If you want to understand the universe, you must understand the atom.
One should not try to be original, but merely to be right.
I have done a terrible thing, I have introduced a new fundamental constant.
The most important thing is not to stop questioning.
A good joke is a serious thing.
Science is a human endeavor, and as such, it is full of human errors.
One should always be skeptical, especially of one's own ideas.
The neutrino is a particle that should not exist.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
The problem with quantum mechanics is that it's too successful.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.
The true value of a theory is its ability to predict new phenomena.
One should never underestimate the power of a good approximation.
The task of science is to understand the world, not to explain it away.
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.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
I am not a great man, but I am a great physicist.
The problem is not to find the answer, but to ask the right question.
Contemporaries of Wolfgang Pauli
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958).