Eugene Wigner Quotes

OK, so the computer has understood, but what about me ?

The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found.

In science, it is not speed that is the most important. It is the dedication, the commitment, the interest and the will to know something and to understand it - these are the things that come first.

When the rods were pushed back in and the clicking had died down, we suddenly experiences a let-down feeling, for all of us understood the language of the counter. Even though we had anticipated the success of the experiment, its accomplishment had a deep impact on us. For some time we had known that we were about to unlock a giant; still we could not escape an eerie feeling when we had actually done it. We felt as, I presume, everyone feels who has done something that he knowns will have very far-reaching consequences which he cannot foresee.

Mathematics is the science of skillful operations with concepts and rules invented just for this purpose.

The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery.

There is no natural phenomenon that is comparable with the sudden and apparently accidentally timed development of science, except perhaps the condensation of a super-saturated gas or the explosion of some unpredictable explosives.

It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.