“There is a great difference between discoveries and inventions. With discoveries, one can always be skeptical, and many surprises can take place. In the case of inventions, surprises can really only occur for people who have not had anything to do with it.”

Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.

In Germany, an effort one thousandth the scale of the American was applied to the problem of producing atomic energy that would drive engines.

Although the theory of relativity makes the greatest of demands on the ability for abstract thought, still it fulfills the traditional requirements of science insofar as it permits a division of the world into subject and object (observer and observed) and, hence, a clear formulation of the law of causality.

I would like to mention astrophysics; in this field, the strange properties of the pulsars and quasars, and perhaps also the gravitational waves, can be considered as a challenge.

I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo-Saxons such tremendous power that Europe will become a bloc under Anglo-Saxon domination. If that is the case, it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether Stalin will be able to stand up to the others as he has done in the past.

Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability.

Sometimes a poor performance is better for enjoyment, because you can look at those things that were wrong and analyze them.

The end of the First World War had thrown Germany’s youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.

If the lecture is good, then everything is too smooth. That’s the same in music: if the performance is too good, you really don’t enjoy it, because it just goes by, and you can never penetrate into the heart of it.

If we made atomic bombs, we would bring about a terrible change in the world. Who knows what would happen from this?

If this were the whole truth, we should, when entering into a new field, introduce only such quantities as can directly be observed, and formulate natural laws only by means of these quantities.

It is generally believed that our science is empirical and that we draw our concepts and our mathematical constructs from the empirical data.

Reports in Washington show that our reasoning was just like that of your physicists.

In America, it was decided to attempt the production of atomic bombs with an effort that would constitute a large part of the collective American war effort.

The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form – the one of the particles, the other of the waves – are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases.

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.

But to feel that there was feeling denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.

Anything which must be understood by millions of people is so hopelessly divorced from how it is that it becomes a form of fiction.

I don’t think there’s anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

I don’t believe in things like that – fairies or brownies or magic or anything. It’s old-fashioned.’ ‘

You do not have to force yourself to do anything at all. There is a continual exchange, a continual dance. It is similar to the sun shining and plants growing. The sun has no desire to create the vegetation; plants simply react to sunlight and the situation develops naturally.

Things are always different than what they might be…If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.

I didn’t aim at anything except good music.

If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.