Quotes by Edward Teller

“When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something so...”

“Today's science is tomorrow's technology.”

“Most people avoid thinking if they can, some of us are addicted to thinking, but Von Neumann actually enjoyed thinking, maybe even to the exclusion of everything else.”

“Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.”

“The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientists job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. Ho...”

“The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.”

“A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.”

“The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.”

“My experience has been in a short 77 years that in the end when you fight for a desperate cause and have good reasons to fight, you usually win.”

“It is not even impossible to imagine that the effects of an atomic war fought with greatly perfected weapons and pushed by the utmost determination will endanger the survival of man.”

“If we stay strong, then I believe we can stabilize the world and have peace based on force. Now, peace based on force is not as good as peace based on agreement, but in the terrible world in which ...”

“I don't want to kill anybody. I am passionately opposed to killing, but I'm even more passionately fond of freedom. The freedom of Dr. Pauling and of myself expressing our opinions freely on any su...”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energ...”

“At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, ...”

“On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news...”

“By having simplified what is known, physicists have been led into realms which as yet are anything but simple. That at some time, they, too, will appear as simple consequences of a theory of which ...”

“The preservation of peace and the improvement of the lot of all people require us to have faith in the rationality of humans. If we have this faith and if we pursue understanding, we have not the p...”

“There's no system foolproof enough to defeat a sufficiently great fool.”

“Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.”

“Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.”