Ketterle Quotes & Sayings

My explorations of the technical world started with Legos, with which I was quite creative in constructing moving objects with the basic building blocks that were then available. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Bose-Einstein condensation is one of the most intriguing phenomena predicted by quantum statistical mechanics. — Wolfgang Ketterle

A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry. — Thomas Jefferson

Amplifying atoms is more subtle than amplifying electromagnetic waves because atoms can only change their quantum state and cannot be created. Therefore, even if one could amplify gold atoms, one would not realize the dreams of medieval alchemy. — Wolfgang Ketterle

A friend of mine has a son who became deaf through meningitis. He called me one spring and asked me to keep a week out of my schedule because he wanted to start a school for deaf kids. I wanted to help. — Stan Mikita

(Nykyrian spun about at the sound, his blaster leveling at the body in the doorway.)
Whoa. Friend! (He tapped his chest twice.) Really good guy. 'Member me? (Syn) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

...it depends on whose reality you're using for rules. You just have to remember that, and then you can see that nothing should be taken absolutely seriously. Personally, I always like to use my own reality as a standard. — Kristen D. Randle

Running is a way for me to relax. With one hour of intense running, I can get a lot of physical exercise. I can relax my body. I feel a tension in my muscles when I don't run. In that sense, I need to get out a few times a week in order to do my work as a scientist, which involves a lot of sitting still. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Auto emission is hazardous and has to be controlled. — Wolfgang Ketterle

I used the Nobel money to buy a house and for the education of my children. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Explorations into chemistry were done in our basement, sometimes with friends, and my parents must have had quite a bit of confidence in my abilities when they allowed me to experiment with explosive mixtures. — Wolfgang Ketterle

A good marriage shuts out a very great deal. — May Sarton

Tell me that you don't take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down. — Susanna Kaysen

The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation. — David Mamet

I wish we could stop the little lies. I don't mean that one has to be brutally frank. I don't believe that we should be brutal about anything, however, it is wonderfully liberating to be honest. One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we say is the truth. — Maya Angelou

When I run, I think about everything: physics, family problems, plans for the weekend. I haven't made any big discoveries on a run, but it does give me time to think through problems. Some solutions are obvious, but they are only obvious when you are relaxed enough to find them. — Wolfgang Ketterle

When everyone else saw the two of them, they saw Gavin who was nothing but trouble and Davy who was a wallflower, but in Gavin's estimation, if you looked inside you'd see that Gavin was just a scared little boy and Davy was his hero. — Kade Boehme

Running and science draw on similar traits - stamina, ambition, patience, and the ability to overcome limits. — Wolfgang Ketterle

When I was around thirty, I met my own personal challenge and finished a few marathons under three hours, and I have completed many long bicycle tours. — Wolfgang Ketterle

As a scientist, I play in the top league - the Olympics, the World Championships - and I want to be in the lead. As a runner, I set personal goals, and I want to push beyond my own personal limits. I was very happy when I practiced for several months and then reached my goal to run a marathon in 2:50. — Wolfgang Ketterle

After earning my Ph.D., I stayed at the Max-Planck Institute as a postdoc, working on laser excitation of Rydberg states of triatomic hydrogen and helium hydride. I also succeeded in analyzing all the emission spectra of helium hydride, which I had discovered during my Ph.D. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Religious truth, or for that matter any truth, requires a calm and meditative atmosphere for its percolation. — Mahatma Gandhi

Maybe if you win a Nobel Prize in economics, you make a lot of money by giving talks ... but not in my area. — Wolfgang Ketterle

For the same reason people watch action movies or game shows, I guess. Mindless entertainment. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, you know. Or Oscar Wilde. It's fun. Like... gilded porn. — Summer Olsen

When air is hot, the molecules move fast and they have high kinetic energy. The colder the molecules are, the smaller their velocities are and, subsequently, their energy. Temperature is simply a way to characterize the energy of a system. — Wolfgang Ketterle

The Austrian School came into existence when a bunch of Viennese rent-gouging landlords didn't want rent control on the rents they could gouge out of their tenants in old Vienna, so they hired a bunch of scribblers - and that's the Austrian School. — Webster Tarpley

Imagine how many aspects of nature we would miss if we lived on the surface of the sun. Without inventing refrigerators, we would only know gaseous matter and never observe liquids or solids, and miss the beauty of snowflakes. — Wolfgang Ketterle

To go below one nanokelvin is like running a mile below four minutes for the first time. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Nothing is more abhorrent to me than sugary-sweet photography full of pretense, poses, and gimmickry. For this reason, I have allowed myself to tell the truth about our times and people in a sincere manner. — August Sander

Instrumental music is nonverbal and thus radically ambiguous. It doesn't lend itself to what might be called content-oriented analysis, though plenty of intellectuals have tried to analyze it in precisely that way. — Terry Teachout

Zero kelvin is the lowest possible temperature. At absolute zero, all motion comes to a standstill. It is obvious that a lower temperature is not feasible because there is no velocity smaller than zero and no energy content less than nothing. — Wolfgang Ketterle

When I was running the marathons in Munich, I always trained by myself. Between the demands of graduate work and a young family, I had to train at unusual hours. A few times, I ran home from my lab late at night, which was 20 kilometers out of town. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Bose and Einstein had triggered low-temperature experiments that have led to the discovery of new matter. I owe my work and my Nobel to them. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Laser cooling opened a new route to ultralow temperature physics. Laser cooling experiments, with room temperature vacuum chambers and easy optical access, look very different from cryogenic cells with multi-layer thermal shielding around them. — Wolfgang Ketterle

I think both running and science reflect certain character traits. I have endurance, patience, and ambition. I'm willing to work hard toward a goal, to push myself and overcome limits. Running and science both let me express these traits. — Wolfgang Ketterle

I think we all want something to knock us on the head and change our lives. — Neil Burger