Edward Teller Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I am guilty of the great crime of optimism.

Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses.

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

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

When you come 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 to fly.

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.

Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

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

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

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.