Fermi Quotes

#1. Fermi started to calculate on his own, saying nothing, and in a direct, simple way found the essential point. The ability of a centrifuge to separate U-235 from U-238 was proportional to its length and to the fourth power of the peripheral speed of its rotor. Karl

Gregory Benford

#2. Fermi thought plutonium production needed an area a mile wide and two miles long for safety. Compton proposed building piles of increasing power to work up to full-scale production and was considering alternative sites in the Lake Michigan Dunes area and in the Tennessee Valley.

Richard Rhodes

#3. There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

Luis Walter Alvarez

#4. Fermi turned to Bohr with weary eyes and a slanted smile, and shrugged. "So we thought we had discovered new elements. We even named them - hesperium, ausonium. Wrong! Mythical! They were ordinary old barium and iodine. We were careful - too careful.

Gregory Benford

#5. The word meltdown had not yet entered the reactor engineer's vocabulary - Fermi was only then inventing that specialty - but that is what Compton was risking, a small Chernobyl in the midst of a crowded city.

Richard Rhodes

#6. I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi . . . when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world.

Richard Rhodes

#7. During the Trinity test of the very first atom bomb, Fermi wondered if the detonation would ignite the Earth's atmosphere. They just didn't know, you see. We think the quantum disruption won't propagate. If it does, then the whole universe gets converted into energy.

Peter F. Hamilton

#8. Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Enrico Fermi

#9. The fundamental point in fabricating a chain reacting machine is of course to see to it that each fission produces a certain number of neutrons and some of these neutrons will again produce fission.

Enrico Fermi

#10. I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'

Enrico Fermi

#11. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country.

Enrico Fermi

#12. There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery

Enrico Fermi

#13. It is our part to seek,
His to grant what we ask;
ours to make a beginning,
His to bring it to completion;
ours to offer what we can,
His to finish what we cannot.

St. Jerome

#14. Young man, if I could remember the names of these particles, I would have been a botanist.

Enrico Fermi

#15. My parents were workers.

Marco Rubio

#16. Before I came here, I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture, I am still confused
but on a higher level.

Enrico Fermi

#17. Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck by the epic beauty or blown away by the insane scale of the universe. Personally, I go for the old existential meltdown followed by acting weird for the next half hour. But everyone feels something.

Enrico Fermi

#18. I don't know what I would do if I didn't write.

Ruth Rendell

#19. Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery.

Enrico Fermi

#20. I hope it won't take long.

Enrico Fermi

#21. Where is everybody? Humans could theoretically colonize the galaxy in a million years or so, and if they could, astronauts from older civilizations could do the same. So why haven't they come to Earth?

Enrico Fermi

#22. Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they already know.

Enrico Fermi

#23. It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly!

Enrico Fermi

#24. Felix's beauty devastates him, annihilates every fiber of his being, and the voices shout in his head, they sing to him until he thinks his head will split.

T.J. Klune

#25. When asked what he meant by a miracle: Oh, anything with a probability of less than 20%.

Enrico Fermi

#26. An experiment disproving a prediction is discovery.

Enrico Fermi

#27. If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist

Enrico Fermi

#28. Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide

Enrico Fermi

#29. Everybody wishes to have something that somebody else has. And that's the root of all sorrows.

Abhijit Naskar