Abraham Pais quotes

Abraham Pais was a Dutch-American physicist and science historian known for his significant contributions to particle physics. His groundbreaking research furthered the understanding of subatomic particles and symmetries in modern physics. He also wrote influential biographies of leading physicists, including Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Here are 26 of his quotes:

Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?

Abraham Pais

A number of current theoretical explorations will turn out to be passing fancies...

Abraham Pais

I knew all the time I was going to get through the war. It was completely irrational, a silly idea, but I was not going to lie down and get myself killed. I was going to get out of it.

Abraham Pais

Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes - even in a scientific text.

Abraham Pais

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

Abraham Pais

Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have. Why did I go? I just wanted to visit some friends. I was a little bit crazy, a little bit insane.

Abraham Pais

I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again.

Abraham Pais

One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see people, or go for a walk in the forest. All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot.

Abraham Pais

The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture. If Mr. X, who knew where I was, was caught for some reason, I should move.

Abraham Pais

Progress leads to confusion leads to progress and on and on without respite.

Abraham Pais

The first thing Bohr said to me was that it would only then be profitable to work with him if I understood that he was a dilettante.

Abraham Pais

For several months I was incapable of feeling anything, completely inaccessible to my feelings - I did not laugh, I did not cry.

Abraham Pais

All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot. I learned, because there was no interruption. I had access to myself, to my thinking.

Abraham Pais

It is perhaps better to say that Bohr's strength lay in his formidable intuition and insight rather than erudition.

Abraham Pais

Most of my family was killed. All of my father's and mother's sisters and brothers and their children, my sister and my old grandfather, they're all gone. Four out of five Jews in Holland never came back after the war - 80 percent.

Abraham Pais

If those papers had been in my pocket I would have never lived to be seventy. I have led a strange life, a set of complete coincidences.

Abraham Pais

Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going.

Abraham Pais

I don't sit here conquering great resistance to talk. It is not my way.

Abraham Pais

The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture.

Abraham Pais

I need not put myself center stage but can rather place myself at the side, like a Greek chorus. As the curtain rises, I can walk to the center and can speak as follows: I wish to tell you of happenings in the twentieth century, as I witnessed them and reflected upon them. You will see me return to center stage, but only occasionally.

Abraham Pais

One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do.

Abraham Pais

I made a discovery, perhaps known to others but new to me: I need not put myself center stage but can rather place myself at the side, like a Greek chorus. As the curtain rises, I can walk to the center and can speak as follows: I wish to tell you of happenings in the twentieth century, as I witnessed them and reflected upon them. You will see me return to center stage, but only occasionally. Once that imagery had gotten hold of me, I went back to Ida and said yes, I shall try.

Abraham Pais