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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 Writings on Physics and Philosophy (1994)

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More quotes by Wolfgang Pauli

When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of "symbolic images."

Letter to Markus Fierz (1948)

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

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.

I cannot believe God is a weak left-hander.

That is why society is in such danger whenever fresh knowledge threatens to explode the old spiritual forms.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Wolfgang Pauli (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.