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)
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
It is a good thing that I am not a politician, otherwise I would have to lie all the time.
The only way to do great work is to be truly dedicated to your craft.
I am not a saint, I am a human being.
The only way to do great work is to be truly committed to your goals.
It is a good thing that I am not a lawyer, otherwise I would have to argue all the time.
The only way to do great work is to be truly persistent in your efforts.
I am not a god, I am a physicist.
The only way to do great work is to be truly resilient in the face of challenges.
I am a physicist, and I am not a philosopher. But I have always been interested in the philosophical implications of physics.
The true value of a man is not in what he has, but in what he is.
Science and religion are not contradictory, but complementary. They are two different ways of looking at the same reality.
The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.
It is not enough to be intelligent. One must also be wise.
The greatest discovery of all is the discovery of oneself.
The world is not as it appears to be. It is much more mysterious and wonderful.
The only way to understand the universe is to understand oneself.
The task of science is not to find the ultimate truth, but to find a better approximation of it.
The human mind is capable of understanding the universe, but it is also capable of creating its own illusions.
The universe is not a machine, but a living organism.
Contemporaries of Wolfgang Pauli
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958).