It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.
David Bernoulli

Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly
have understood it.
Niels Bohr

If anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.
Niels Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Niels Bohr

God runs electromagnetic by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil
runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
Sir William Bragg

Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that
even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already
have.
René Descartes

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Edison

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Thomas Edison

The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
Albert Einstein

There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the
universe.
Albert Einstein

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
Albert Einstein

Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater.
Albert Einstein

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is
reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein

I know little about nature and hardly anything about men.
Albert Einstein

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.
Albert Einstein

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.
Albert Einstein

Newton, forgive me.
Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended.
Albert Einstein

This has been done elegantly by Minkowski; but chalk is cheaper than grey matter, and
we will do it as it comes.
Albert Einstein

Physics is like sex. Of course it can give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Richard Feynman

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus
is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things...
Richard Feynman

(Criticized for using formal mathematical manipulations, without understanding how they worked)
Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?
Oliver Heaviside

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
Werner Heisenberg

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg

Physics is much too hard for physicists.
David Hilbert

Oh, that Einstein, always skipping lectures... I certainly never would have thought he could do it.
Hermann Minkowski

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
Robert Oppenheimer

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.
Blaise Pascal

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
Blaise Pascal

The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
Blaise Pascal

Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I
were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!
Wolfgang Pauli

I didn't think, I experimented.
Wilhelm Roentgen

All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial.
Ernest Rutherford

I do not like Quantum Mechanics, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
Erwin Schrödinger

There's no system foolproof enough to defeat a sufficiently great fool.
Edward Teller

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
Werner Von Braun

It was absolutely marvelous working for Pauli. You could ask him anything. There was no worry
that he would think a particular question was stupid, since he thought all questions were stupid.
Victor Frederick Weisskopf

The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
and a student of gravitational relativity theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday. On Sunday he is neither, but is praying to his God that someone,
preferably himself, will find the reconciliation between the two views.
Norbert Wiener

Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a
physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands
the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
Eugene Wigner
 

Some other quotes

Chemistry is physics without thought.
Mathematics is physics without purpose.

Absolute zero is cool.

Referee's report: This paper contains much that is new and much that is true. Unfortunately, that which is
true is not new and that which is new is not true.