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)

The universe is psychoid.

Personal reflection 1953

Numbers are archetypes of order.

Remark 1950

The Kabbalah holds secrets of creation.

Letter 1948

Alchemy is the projection of the unconscious onto matter.

Essay 1951

The philosopher's stone is the self.

Speech 1952

Transformation is the goal of life.

Interview 1953

The quaternions reveal the structure of the psyche.

Major work 1950

Four is the number of wholeness.

Personal note 1949

The trinity is incomplete without the fourth.

Letter 1951

God is not three, but fourfold.

Essay 1952

The world egg symbolizes creation.

Remark 1950

Myth is the precursor of science.

Speech 1948

Religion and science are complementary.

Interview 1953

The devil is the personification of the shadow.

Correspondence 1951

Christ is the archetype of the self.

Essay 1952

The fish symbol is ancient.

Letter 1950

The uroboros represents eternity.

Personal reflection 1949

The tree of life connects heaven and earth.

Speech 1951

The sephiroth are emanations of the divine.

Interview 1952

Ein Sof is the infinite.

Remark 1950