The Pursuit of Simplicity (1981), p. 72
Context: 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 no one has yet dreamed is not a statement of fact.
It is a statement of faith.
Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
“How many realms since Troy have been o'erthrown?
How many nations captive led? How oft
Has Fortune up and down throughout the world
Changed slavery for dominion?”
Quot post excidium Trojae sunt eruta regna?
Quot capti populi? quoties Fortuna per orbem
Servitium imperiumque tulit, varieque revertit?
Book I, line 506, as reported in Dictionary of Quotations (classical) (1897) by T. B. Harbottle, p. 248.
Astronomica
“Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.”
Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991) by Edward Teller, Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley, Ch. 10, p. 150 footnote
Preface.
A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)
Context: The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.
Molloy (1951)
Context: Anything worse than what I do, without knowing what, or why, I have never been able to conceive, and that doesn’t surprise me, for I never tried. For had I been able to conceive something worse than what I had I would have known no peace until I got it, if I know anything about myself.
“I don't think anything might have been. What is, is.”
Dweller on the Threshold.
Song lyrics, Beautiful Vision (1982)
