Pauli Quotes & Sayings

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

Through Jung [Pauli] became very interested in various kinds of mysticism, including Jewish mysticism. This led Pauli to develop a friendship with Gershom Scholem, the world's greatest authority in that field and in the Cabala, .... On one occasion Scholem asked me to tell him about unsolved problems in modern physics. .... When I mentioned this number --137-- to Scholem, .... He told me that in Hebrew .... The number corresponding to the word 'cabala' happens to be 137. — Victor F. Weisskopf

In his first philosophical lecture on modern physics that Pauli gave in November 1934 to the Zurich Philosophical Society he said that only a formulation of quantum theory would be satisfactory which expresses the relation between the value of [the fine structure constant] and charge conservation in the same complementary was as that between the space-time description and energy-momentum conservation. — Charles P. Enz

What is often called exceptional ability is nothing more than persistent endeavor. — Pauli Murray

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

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

Hope is a song in a weary throat. — Pauli Murray

That theory is worthless. It isn't even wrong! — Wolfgang Pauli

Good wine, fine chocolate and dangerous men! — Frances Pauli

The natural scientist is concerned with a particular kind of phenomena ... he has to confine himself to that which is reproducible ... I do not claim that the reproducible by itself is more important than the unique. But I do claim that the unique exceeds the treatment by scientific method. Indeed it is the aim of this method to find and test natural laws ... — Wolfgang Pauli

It is always the older that emanates the new one. — Wolfgang Pauli

The power of the deductive network produced in physics has been illustrated in a delightful article by Victor F. Weisskopf. He begins by taking the magnitudes of six physical constants known by measurement: the mass of the proton, the mass and electric charge of the electron, the light velocity, Newton's gravitational constant, and the quantum of action of Planck.

He adds three of four fundamental laws (e.g., de Broglie's relations connecting particle momentum and particle energy with the wavelength and frequency, and the Pauli exclusion principle), and shows that one can then derive a host of different, apparently quite unconnected, facts that happen to be known to us by observation separately .... — Gerald Holton

Life is about flows not about stuff we have. Water in a tank turns bad. Water that flows gives life. Money in banks turn toxic, it must flow — Gunter Pauli

True community is based on upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together. — Pauli Murray

The founders and grand theorists of modern (quantum and relativity) physics: Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Eddington, Pauli, de Broglie, Jeans, and Planck. — Ken Wilber

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

We are selling ourselves very short by funneling our energies into what the traditional perception is of academic and monetary success. — Gunter Pauli

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

One shouldn't work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether any semiconductors exist. — Wolfgang Pauli

Imagine being able to plot in advance, in systematic fashion, the approach of all meaningful coincidences. Is that a priori, by the very meaning of the word, not a contradiction? After all, a coincidence, or as Pauli called it, a manifestation of synchronicity, is by its very nature not dependent on the past; hence nothing exists as a harbinger of it (cf. David Hume on the topic; in particular the train whistle versus the train). This state, not knowing what is going to happen next and therefore having no way of controlling it, is the sine qua non of the unhappy world of the schizophrenic; he is helpless, passive, and instead of doing things, he is done to. Reality happens to him
a sort of perpetual auto accident, going on and on without relief. — Philip K. Dick

It isn't right. It isn't even wrong. — Wolfgang Pauli

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

... it should be remembered that the atomicity of electric charge has already found its expression in the specific numerical value of the fine structure constant, a theoretical understanding of which is still missing today. — Wolfgang Pauli

Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. — Wolfgang Pauli

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

There can never be two or more equivalent electrons in an atom, for which in a strong field the values of all the quantum numbers n, k1, k2 and m are the same. If an electron is present, for which these quantum numbers (in an external field) have definite values, then this state is 'occupied.' — Wolfgang Pauli

Black women, historically, have been doubly victimized by the twin immoralities of Jim Crow and Jane Crow ... Black women, faced with these dual barriers, have often found that sex bias is more formidable than racial bias. — Pauli Murray

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

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

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

This phenomenon suggests nineteenth-century German polymath Adolf Bastian's theory of Elementargedanke, literally "elementary thoughts of humankind," which so influenced physicists like Planck, Pauli, and Einstein, indeed many of those in the German school of physics, which was dominant in the early decades of the twentieth century leading up to World War II, as well as anthropologists like Franz Boas (the father of American anthropology) and physicians such as Jung. The idea of the collective unconscious (Jung's term for the nonlocal domain) was in the way he expressed it. It proposes a worldview in which all manifestations of consciousness, regardless of the complexity of their physical forms, are part of a network of life. A network in which each component both informs and influences as it is informed and influenced. It — Stephan A. Schwartz

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

It was absolutely marvelous working for Pauli. You could ask him anything. There was no worry that he would think a particular question was stupid, since he thought all questions were stupid. — Victor Frederick Weisskopf

It seems significant that according to quantum physics the indestructibility of energy on one hand which expresses its timeless existence and the appearance of energy in space and time on the other hand correspond to two contradictory (complementary) aspects of reality. In fact, both are always present, but in individual cases the one or the other may be more pronounced. — Wolfgang Pauli

Great art is not a matter of presenting one side or another, but presenting a picture so full of the contradictions, tragedies, [and] insights of the period that the impact is at once disturbing and satisfying. — Pauli Murray

I do not mind if you think slowly, but I do object when you publish more quickly than you think. — Wolfgang Pauli

As I regard physics and psychology as complementary types of examination, I am certain that there is an equally valid way that must lead the psychologist 'from behind' (namely, through investigating the archetypes) into the world of physics. As an example of background physics, I shall discuss a motif that occurs regularly in my dreams - namely, fine structure, in particular doublet structure of spectral lines and the separation of a chemical element into two isotopes. — Wolfgang Pauli

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

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

Our lives are full of stress. Some meditate, some walk, some sing and dance. Nature offers us garlic, maitake and hibiscus to relieve stress — Gunter Pauli

If we wanted to construct a basic philosophical attitude from these scientific utterances of Pauli's, at first we would be inclined to infer from them an extreme rationalism and a fundamentally skeptical point of view. In reality however, behind this outward display of criticism and skepticism lay concealed a deep philosophical interest even in those dark areas of reality of the human mind which elude the grasp of reason. And while the power of fascination emanating from Pauli's analyses of physical problems was admittedly due in some measure to the detailed and penetrating clarity of his formulations, the rest was derived from a constant contact with the field of creative processes, for which no rational formulation as yet exists. — Werner Heisenberg

There is no unemployment in eco-systems — Gunter Pauli

One person plus one typewriter constitutes a movement. — Pauli Murray

Later, however, I came to recognize the objective nature of these dreams or fantasies ... Thus it was that I gradually came to acknowledge that such fantasies or dreams are neither meaningless nor purely arbitrary but rather convey a sort of "second meaning" of the terms applied. — Wolfgang Pauli

Aristotle was by far a less able thinker than Plato ... he was completely overwhelmed by Plato. — Wolfgang Pauli

It would be most satisfactory if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality — Wolfgang Pauli

Why did the chicken cross the road? there already was a chicken on this side of the road. — Wolfgang Pauli

Most modern physicists have accepted the fact that the role played by the conscious ideas of an observer in every microphysical experiment cannot be eliminated; but they have not concerned themselves with the possibility that the total psychological condition (both conscious and unconscious) of the observer might play a role as well. As Pauli points out, however, we have at least no a priori reasons for rejecting this possibility. But we must loot at this as a still unanswered and an unexplored problem. — C. G. Jung

A square space with complicated ceremonies going on in it, the purpose of which is to transform animals into men. Two snakes, moving in opposite directions, have to be got rid of at once. Some animals are there, e.g. foxes and dogs. The people walk around the square and must let themselves be bitten by these animals in each of the four corners . If they run away all is lost. Now the higher animals come on to the scene-bulls and ibexes. Four snakes glide into the four corners. Then the congregation flies out. Two sacrificial priests carry in a huge reptile and with this they touch the forehead of a shapeless animal lump or life-mass. Out of it there instantly rises a human head, transfigured. A voice proclaims: "These are attempts at being. — David Lindorff

In a word, and bluntly: as they walked around Sankt Pauli, it came to Pelletier and Espinoza that the search for Archimboldi could never fill their lives. They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him, partly because Archimboldi was always far away, partly because the deeper they went into his work, the more it devoured its explorers. In a word: in Sankt Pauli and later at Mrs. Bubis's house, hung with photographs of the late Mr. Bubis and his writers, Pelletier and Espinoza understood that what they wanted to make was love, not war. — Roberto Bolano

People who contend with stressful situations regularly detect more opportunities of this nature than people who are living in pampered circumstances. — Gunter Pauli

We are reducing the number of relationships. We are slowly but surely consuming the massive reserves of energy that have been accumulating and are stored in the ecosystems. — Gunter Pauli

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

After reading a paper by a young theoretical scientist, Pauli, shaking his head sadly, commented:
That is not even wrong. — Wolfgang Pauli

In not a single one of these little campaigns was I victorious. In other words, in each case, I personally failed, but I have lived to see the thesis upon which I was operating vindicated. And what I very often say is that I've lived to see my lost causes found. — Pauli Murray

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

The focus of history and philosophy of science scholar Arthur Miller's (2010) "137: Jung and Pauli and the Pursuit of Scientific Obsession" is Jung and Pauli's
mutual effort to discover the cosmic number or fine structure constant, which is a fundamental physical constant dealing with electromagnetism, or, from a different perspective, could be considered the philosopher's stone of the mathematical universe.
This was indeed one of Pauli and Jung's collaborative passions, but it was not the only concentration of their relationship. Quantum physics could be seen as the natural progression from ancient alchemy, through chemistry, culminating in the abstract world of subatomic particles, wave functions, and mathematics. [Ancient Egypt and Modern Psychotherapy] — Todd Hayen

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. — Wolfgang Pauli

It is not only not right, it is not even wrong. — Wolfgang Pauli

For [Wolfgang] Pauli the central problem of electrodynamics was the field concept and the existence of an elementary charge which is expressible by the fine-structure constant ... 1/137. This fundamental pure number had greatly fascinated Pauli, .... For Pauli the explanation of the number 137 was the test of a successful field theory, a test which no theory has passed up to now. — Charles P. Enz

Everything comes to him who knows how to wait. — Wolfgang Pauli

The fact of the existence of two theories [causal and acausal] that contradict each other in Jung ... corresponds psychologically to the vascillation between 3 and 4. — Wolfgang Pauli

How can one look happy when he is contemplating the anomolous Zeeman effect? (Wolfgang Pauli) — Manjit Kumar

Wolfgang Pauli, in the months before Heisenberg's paper on matrix mechanics pointed the way to a new quantum theory, wrote to a friend, "At the moment physics is again terribly confused. In any case, it is too difficult for me, and I wish I had been a movie comedian or something of the sort and had never heard of physics." That testimony is particularly impressive if contrasted with Pauli's words less than five months later: "Heisenberg's type of mechanics has again given me hope and joy in life. To be sure it does not supply the solution to the riddle, but I believe it is again possible to march forward. — Wolfgang Pauli

Realizing its fundamental importance in understanding spectral lines, in atomic physics and in the theory of how light and electrons interact, quantum electrodynamics, Pauli and Heisenberg were determined to derive it from quantum theory rather than introducing it from the start. They believed that if they could find a version of quantum electrodynamics capable of producing the fine structure constant, it would not contain the infinities that marred their theories. — Arthur I. Miller

God made the bulk; the surface was invented by the devil. — Wolfgang Pauli

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. — Wolfgang Pauli

That's not right. That's not even wrong. — Wolfgang Pauli

This is to show the world that I can paint like Titian . [A big drawing of a rectangle] Only technical details are missing. — Wolfgang Pauli

Es gibt keinen Gott und Dirac ist sein Prophet. (There is no God and Dirac is his Prophet.)

{A remark made during the Fifth Solvay International Conference (October 1927), after a discussion of the religious views of various physicists, at which all the participants laughed, including Dirac, as quoted in Teil und das Ganze (1969), by Werner Heisenberg, p. 119; it is an ironic play on the Muslim statement of faith, the Shahada, often translated: 'There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet.'} — Wolfgang Pauli

The theoretical determination of the fine structure constant is certainly the most important of the unsolved problems of modern physics. — Wolfgang Pauli

In 1952, through his collaboration with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung argued that there existed a principle of acausal orderedness that underlay such "meaningful coincidences," which he called synchronicity. He claimed that under certain circumstances, the constellation of an archetype led to a relativization of time and space, which explained how such events could happen. This was an attempt to expand scientific understanding to accommodate events such as his visions of 1913 and 1914. — C. G. Jung

For relatively small stars, the Pauli exclusion principle keeps the electrons in a star sufficiently separated to prevent the star from contracting further after it has spent its fuel. In other words, the electrons counteract the crushing gravitational force. However, for stars more than about 1.5 times the mass of the sun (a mass known as the Chandrasekhar limit), this repulsive force would not be enough to stop stellar collapse. — Clifford A. Pickover

I don't mind that you think slowly but I do mind that you are publishing faster than you think. — Wolfgang Pauli

Key in life is to be able to answer the question "How much is enough?" Modern society has a desire to accumulate stuff & do nothing with it — Gunter Pauli

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

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

A synthesis embracing both rational understanding and the mystical experience of unity is the mythos, spoken or unspoken, or our present day and age. — Wolfgang Pauli