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If some nuclear properties of the heavy elements had been a little different from what they turned out to be, it might have been impossible to build a bomb.

— Emilio Segrè Enrico Fermi: Physicist (1970)

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Science

More quotes by Emilio Segrè

In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many....Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs.

Enrico Fermi: Physicist (1970)

I remember having listened to Fermi’s discussions on hydrodynamics with von Neumann. (These took the strange form of competitions before Fermi’s office blackboard as each tried to solve the problem under study first; von Neumann, with his unmatched lightning-fast analytical skill, usually won).

Enrico Fermi: Physicist (1970)

In an enterprise such as the building of the atomic bomb the difference between ideas, hopes, suggestions and theoretical calculations, and solid numbers based on measurement, is paramount. All the committees, the politicking and the plans would have come to naught if a few unpredictable nuclear cross sections had been different from what they are by a factor of two.

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

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