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?".

Wolfgang Pauli

Categorized in : Thinking Beautiful Unhappy

I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.

Wolfgang Pauli

particles terrible done

The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level.

Wolfgang Pauli

achieve physics levels

That's not right. That's not even wrong.

Wolfgang Pauli

science

God made the bulk; the surface was invented by the devil.

Wolfgang Pauli

surface devil made

Everything comes to him who knows how to wait.

Wolfgang Pauli

know-how waiting knows

If speculative ideas can not be tested, they're not science; they don't even rise to the level of being wrong.

Wolfgang Pauli

can-not levels ideas

What really matters for me is ... the more active role of the observer in quantum physics ... According to quantum physics the observer has indeed a new relation to the physical events around him in comparison with the classical observer, who is merely a spectator.

Wolfgang Pauli

events roles science

The fact that the author thinks slowly is not serious, but the fact that he publishes faster than he thinks is inexcusable.

Wolfgang Pauli

science facts thinking

To us ... the only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality-the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical-as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously ... It would be most satisfactory of all if physis and psyche (i.e., matter and mind) could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.

Wolfgang Pauli

views science reality

Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!

Wolfgang Pauli

comedian wish science

How can one avoid despondency if one thinks of the anomalous Zeeman effect?

Wolfgang Pauli

despondency effects thinking

Well, our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is "God does not exist and Dirac is His prophet."

Wolfgang Pauli

there-is-no-god guiding-principles prophet

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.

Wolfgang Pauli

mean reality ideas

You know, what Einstein has just said isn't so stupid.

Wolfgang Pauli

stupid knows said

When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of 'symbolic images.' The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts.

Wolfgang Pauli

attitude ideas thinking

Although I have no objection to accepting the existence of relatively constant psychic contents that survive personal ego, it must always be born in mind that we have no way of knowing what these contents are actually like "as such." All we can observe is their effect on other living people, whose spiritual level and whose personal unconscious crucially influence the way these contents actually manifest themselves.

Wolfgang Pauli

psychics knowing spiritual

I refuse to believe that God is a weak left-hander.

Wolfgang Pauli

left-handers weak believe

I confess, that very different from you, I do find sometimes scientific inspiration in mysticism ... but this is counterbalanced by an immediate sense for mathematics.

Wolfgang Pauli

different inspiration sometimes

For quite a while I have set for myself the rule if a theoretician says 'universal' it just means pure nonsense.

Wolfgang Pauli

nonsense science mean

From the point of view of logic, my report on 'Exclusion principle and quantum mechanics' has no conclusion. I believe that it will only be possible to write the conclusion if a theory will be established which will determine the value of the fine structure constant and will thus explain the atomistic structure of electricity, which is such an essential quality of all atomic sources of electric fields actually occurring in nature.

Wolfgang Pauli

views writing believe