William Shockley Quotes

If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.

My decision to come to Bell Telephone Laboratories immediately after obtaining my Ph.D. in 1936 was strongly influenced by the fact that my supervisor would be C. J. Davisson.

I was not allowed to take spherical trigonometry because I'd sprained my ankle. Because I'd sprained my ankle, I had an incomplete in gym, phys ed. And the rule was that if you had an incomplete in anything, you were not allowed to take an overload.

I am overwhelmed by an irresistible temptation to do my climb by moonlight and unroped. This is contrary to all my rock climbing teaching & does not mean poor training, but only a strong-headedness.

Regret is unnecessary. Think before you act.

Frequently, I have been asked if an experiment I have planned is pure or applied science; to me it is more important to know if the experiment will yield new and probably enduring knowledge about nature. If it is likely to yield such knowledge, it is, in my opinion, good fundamental research; and this is more important than whether the motivation is purely aesthetic satisfaction on the part of the experimenter on the one hand or the improvement of the stability of a high-power transistor on the other.

It has today occurred to me that an amplifier using semiconductors rather than vacuum is in principle possible.
[Laboratory notebook, 29 Dec 1939.]

The objective of producing useful devices has strongly influenced the choice of the research projects with which I have been associated.

An important fraction of United States industry adheres to the idea that research of a fundamental character is worthwhile from a practical point of view.