Isaac Rabi Quotes & Sayings

We must also teach science not as the bare body of fact, but more as human endeavor in its historic context - in the context of the effects of scientific thought on every kind of thought. We must teach it as an intellectual pursuit rather than as a body of tricks. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

[Science is] a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe itself. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

I sniffed as a few tears escaped, lifting my hands to wipe them away. It was then that I caught the only clues I'd been given by whoever had left me here.
On one wrist someone had written You are Kahlen. The other said He is Akinli.
I flipped my hands over and searched up and down my arms, hoping there was more.
"Look," I begged, holding out my arms.
"Pretty handwriting," Ben commented.
Julie hit him, but in a way that seemed playful. "Seriously?"
"That's all you have?" Akinli asked.
"Apparently. So, all I know is who I am and who you are." I looked into his eyes, the glowing blue, and sensed that was all that mattered. — Kiera Cass

Your gaydar can't leap over buildings in a single bound like Superman."
"He's wearing a thong. Enough said."
"It's for ease of movement."
"Thong," Lila repeated. — Nora Roberts

Physicist Isador Isaac Rabi, who won a Nobel Prize for inventing a technique that permitted scientists to probe the structure of atoms and molecules in the 1930s, attributed his success to the way his mother used to greet him when he came home from school each day. "Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?" she would say. — Richard Saul Wurman

Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

I trained myself, whenever I walk into auditions, to hate everyone in the room. — Adam Driver

You know that, according to quantum theory, if two particles collide with enough energy you can, in principle, with an infinitesimal probability, produce two grand pianos. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

Programmers have been wandering out and shooting a shotgun into the night sky and hoping they hit something, and I end up paying $150 for channels full of nothing I want to watch. — Rick Smolan

All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride ... — William James

I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up and they keep their curiosity. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

Science itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way ... Only the graduate student, poor beast of burden that he is, can be expected to know a little of each. As the number of physicists increases, each specialty becomes more self-sustaining and self-contained. Such Balkanization carries physics, and indeed, every science further away, from natural philosophy, which, intellectually, is the meaning and goal of science. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

The scientist does not defy the universe. He accepts it. It is his dish to savor, his realm to explore; it is his adventure and never-ending delight. It is complaisant and elusive but never dull. It is wonderful both in the small and in the large. In short, its exploration is the highest occupation for a gentleman. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way into you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds.
[Witnessing the first atomic bomb test explosion.] — Isidor Isaac Rabi

Yooralla, like most disability service organisations, is full of good people who are passionate about the rights of people with disabilities. — Stella Young

Physics is an otherworld thing, it requires a taste for things unseen, even unheard of- a high degree of abstraction ... These faculties die off somehow when you grow up ... profound curiosity happens when children are young. I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race ... Once you are sophisticated, you know too much- far too much. Pauli once said to me, "I know a great deal. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.". — Isidor Isaac Rabi

To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and meaning to existence as well as a knowledge, understanding, love, and admiration for the world. It gives a deeper meaning to morality and another dimension to esthetics. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. Izzy, she would say, did you ask a good question today? That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

There isn't a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined organization. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

There are questions which illuminate, and there are those that destroy. I was always taught to ask the first kind. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

When [Niels] Bohr is about everything is somehow different. Even the dullest gets a fit of brilliancy. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids ? — Isidor Isaac Rabi

As yet, if a man has no feeling for art he is considered narrow-minded, but if he has no feeling for science this is considered quite normal. This is a fundamental weakness. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, 'Will it bring you nearer to God?' — Isidor Isaac Rabi

If you decide you don't have to get A's, you can learn an enormous amount in college. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin - the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man ... Where are the life-size - or even pint-size - Benjamin Franklins of today? — Isidor Isaac Rabi