“Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.”
Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist
Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991) by Edward Teller, Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley, Ch. 10, p. 150 footnote
This quote has many variants. An early version attributed to the Göttingen School appears in a book review by Heinrich Wieleitner in Isis, Volume 7, No. 4, December 1925, p. 597: Ach, die Physik! Die ist ja für die Physiker viel zu schwer! (Oh, physics! That's just too difficult for the physicists!).
Disputed
“Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.”
Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist
Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991) by Edward Teller, Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley, Ch. 10, p. 150 footnote
“... like most physicists, I really enjoy talking about physics.”
Nima Arkani-Hamed (1972) American-Canadian physicist
[A Conversation with Nima Arkani-Hamed: The Power of Principles, Physics Revealed (Part I), April 2, 2021, Ideas Roadshow, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6_iJRY6nU4] (quote at 2:47 of 57:39)
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England
As quoted in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 14 | (1946), p. 248
Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009) Russian Physicist
in his Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2003/ginzburg-lecture.html, December 8, 2003, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University.
Valentine Telegdi (1922–2006) American physicist
[Physics Today, A Lowbrow's View of Feynman, 42, 2, 1989, 10.1063/1.881197] (p. 85)
Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist
The Expanding Universe. (1933) Ch. IV The Universe and the Atom
Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) German-American psychologist and phenomenologist
Source: Dynamics in Psychology, 1940, p. 116
George Gamow (1904–1968) Russian-American physicist and science writer
"Interview with George Gamow" http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4325.html, by Charles Weiner at Professor Gamow's home in Boulder, Colorado (25 April 1968)
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
1950s, On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation (1950)
Edward Condon (1902–1974) physicist
Physics, in What is Science?: Twelve Eminent Scientists and Philosophers Explain Their Various Fields to the Layman, by James Roy Newman, published by Simon and Schuster (1955), p. 102