Edward Teller Quotations

Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.

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.

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 science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.

No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.

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

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

I tried to contribute to the defeat of the Soviets. If I contributed 1%, it is 1% of something enormous.

In a dangerous situation we have chosen the most dangerous of courses...we have chosen not to face our danger!

A state-of-the-art calculation requires 100 hours of CPU time on the state-of-the-art computer, independent of the decade.

The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses.

No, I'm the infamous Edward Teller.

I believe in excellence. It is a basic need of every human soul. All of us can be excellent, because, fortunately, we are exceedingly diverse in our ambitions and talents.

If anyone wants a hole in the ground, nuclear explosives can make big holes

Could we have avoided the tragedy of Hiroshima? Could we have started the atomic age with clean hands? No one knows. No one can find out.

When Columbus took off, the purpose was to improve trade relations with China. That problem has not been solved to this very day, but just look at the by-products.

Knowing he [Bob Serber] was going to the [first atom bomb] test, I asked him how he planned to deal with the danger of rattlesnakes. He said, 'I'll take along a bottle of whiskey.' … I ended by asking, 'What would you do about those possibilities [of what unknown phenomena might cause a nuclear explosion to propagate in the atmosphere]?' Bob replied, 'Take a second bottle of whiskey.

There is no case where ignorance should be preferred to knowledge - especially if the knowledge is terrible.

In our educational institutions applied science may almost be described as a "no-man's land."

Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.

Today's science is tomorrow's technology.

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist's job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives.

If not for me, the H-bomb would have been developed in Russia first. In the U.S., we'd now be speaking Russian.

I hate doubt, yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worth believing in.

There is a time for scientists and movie stars and those who have flown the atlantic to restrain their opinions lest they be taken more seriously than they should be.

In the history of physics, there have been three great revolutions in thought that first seemed absurd yet proved to be true. The first proposed that the earth, instead of being stationary, was moving around at a great and variable speed in a universe that is much bigger than it appears to our immediate perception. That proposal, I believe, was first made by Aristarchos two millenia ago ... Remarkably enough, the name Aristarchos in Greek means best beginning.

Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

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

[Chemistry] laboratory work was my first challenge. ... I still carry the scars of my first discovery-that test-tubes are fragile.

Physics without mathematics is meaningless.

I am guilty of the great crime of optimism.

Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors.

It is often claimed that knowledge multiplies so rapidly that nobody can follow it. I believe this is incorrect. At least in science it is not true. The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler. This, of course, goes contrary to what everyone accepts.

I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by talking about it.

If there ever was a misnomer, it is "exact science." Science has always been full of mistakes. The present day is no exception. And our mistakes are good mistakes; they require a genius to correct. Of course, we do not see our own mistakes.

Really exotic methods of propulsion . . . will have to be devised to get there. How it will be done, I do not know. Whether it will be done, I am not quite certain. But I would bet it can be done.

I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.

I think that intellectuals who end up in hell will have to read page proofs and check indexes there.

When you're certain you cannot be fooled, you become easy to fool.

One may say that predictions are dangerous particularly for the future. If the danger involved in a prediction is not incurred, no consequence follows and the uncertainty principle is not violated.

We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.

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

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.

Society's emissions of carbon dioxide may or may not turn out to have something significant to do with global warming-the jury is still out.

U.S. has lost a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor.

In the theater you create a moment, but in that moment, there is a touch, a twinkle of eternity. And not just eternity, but community. . . . That connection is a sense of life for me.

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.

Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.

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 media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.

The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to EMOTIONALLY comprehend the exponential function.

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

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 solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.