Eugene Wigner Quotes

#1. The optimist regards the future as uncertain.

Eugene Wigner

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

Eugene Wigner

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

Eugene Wigner

#4. 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.

Eugene Wigner

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

Eugene Wigner

#6. 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.

Eugene Wigner

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

Eugene Wigner

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

Eugene Wigner

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

Eugene Wigner

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

Eugene Wigner

#11. In science, it is not speed that is the most important. It is the dedication, the commitment, the interest and the will to know something and to understand it - these are the things that come first.

Eugene Wigner