Top 15 Wolfgang Pauli Quotes

There are many examples in physics showing that higher precision revealed new phenomena, inspired new ideas, or confirmed or dethroned well-established theories.

I cannot believe God is a weak left-hander.

Über Halbleiter soll man nicht arbeiten, das ist eine Schweinerei; wer weiss, ob es überhaupt Halbleiter gibt.

One shouldn’t work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether any semiconductors exist.

Against all the retrogressive endeavors (Bohm, Schrödinger etc. and in some sense also Einstein) I am sure that the statistical character of the ψ-function and hence of nature’s laws – on which you insisted from the very beginning against Schrödinger’s resistance – will define the style of the laws at least for some centuries. It may be that later, e.g. in connection with the living processes, one will find something entirely new, but to dream of a way back, back to the classical style of Newton-Maxwell (and these are just dreams these gentlemen are giving themselves up to) seems to me hopeless, digressive, bad taste. And, we could add, it is not even a beautiful dream.

Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato, interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato, looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.

A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, “You look very unhappy”; whereupon I answered fiercely, “How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?”.

The setup of the book as far as printing and paper are concerned is splendid.

God made the bulk; surfaces were invented by the devil.

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 solve them and write about them. The big problems came and passed by, others solved them and wrote about them. I was a classicist and not a revolutionary.

Ich habe nichts dagegen wenn Sie langsam denken, Herr Doktor, aber ich habe etwas dagegen wenn Sie rascher publizieren als denken.

I don't mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think.

Das is nicht einmal falsch.

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.

The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth’s motion...