Isidor Isaac Rabi Quotes

#1. I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up and they keep their curiosity.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#2. You know that, according to quantum theory, if two particles collide with enough energy you can, in principle, with an infinitesimal probability, produce two grand pianos.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#3. As yet, if a man has no feeling for art he is considered narrow-minded, but if he has no feeling for science this is considered quite normal. This is a fundamental weakness.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#4. My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin - the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man ... Where are the life-size - or even pint-size - Benjamin Franklins of today?

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#5. It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#6. There are questions which illuminate, and there are those that destroy. I was always taught to ask the first kind.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#7. To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and meaning to existence as well as a knowledge, understanding, love, and admiration for the world. It gives a deeper meaning to morality and another dimension to esthetics.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#8. Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#9. [Science is] a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe itself.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#10. There isn't a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined organization.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#11. If you decide you don't have to get A's, you can learn an enormous amount in college.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#12. When [Niels] Bohr is about everything is somehow different. Even the dullest gets a fit of brilliancy.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#13. We must also teach science not as the bare body of fact, but more as human endeavor in its historic context - in the context of the effects of scientific thought on every kind of thought. We must teach it as an intellectual pursuit rather than as a body of tricks.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#14. Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, 'Will it bring you nearer to God?'

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#15. We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids ?

Isidor Isaac Rabi