Eugene Wigner Quotations

Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.

It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.

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

The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Johnny Von Neumann and the rest of us.

The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.

Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.

When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.

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

It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.

[T]he laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated ... without recourse to the concept of consciousness.

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.

The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation of it.

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.

It's nice the know the computer understands the situation, but I would like to understand it too.

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.

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

The optimist regards the future as uncertain.

The unreasonable efficiency of mathematics in science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve.