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 exclusion principle is the most fundamental law of nature.
Science is a dialogue between man and nature.
The future is uncertain, but the end is always near.
The world is not as it appears to be.
The greatest discovery of all is that the universe is comprehensible.
One cannot understand quantum mechanics without understanding the role of the observer.
The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees.
The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
We are all agreed that the only way to make progress is to admit our mistakes.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
The creative principle resides in the unconscious.
The discovery of the neutrino was a triumph of the human spirit over the limitations of observation.
The physicist who is not also a philosopher is only a technician.
The universe is a symphony, and we are the instruments.
Contemporaries of Wolfgang Pauli
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958).