31 quotes
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991)
Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Lasers '87 (1988)
No, I'm the infamous Edward Teller.
I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by talking about it.
If we could have ended the war by showing the power of science without killing a single person, all of us would now be happier, more reasonable and much more safe.
My name is not Strangelove. I don't know about Strangelove. I'm not interested in Strangelove. What else can I say?... Look. Say it three times more, and I throw you out of this office.
For this then, and for many other reasons, I will say that any new fuels we find will be welcome. I believe that of the new fuels, nuclear energy is the most promising and I will talk about nuclear energy from here on.
By having simplified what is known, physicists have been led into realms which as yet are anything but simple. That at some time, they, too, will appear as simple consequences of a theory of which no one has yet dreamed is not a statement of fact.
It is a statement of faith.
The Pursuit of Simplicity (1981)
When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
Seven Steps to Starting and Running an Editorial Consulting Business (2002)
I don't want to kill anybody. I am passionately opposed to killing, but I'm even more passionately fond of freedom. The freedom of Dr. Pauling and of myself expressing our opinions freely on any subject, however broad, however far removed of our proper competence, but particularly, to be able to express our opinions in the fields we really know; this would not be possible in Russia.
I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer it in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already had worked out and difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, "I don't believe in it."