Wigner, Eugene

"The history of physics is the history of human consciousness expanding its capacity for understanding."

"Symmetry and asymmetry are the two great themes through which nature composes her symphony."

"A physical theory that cannot be expressed simply is probably not a true theory."

"The study of nature teaches us humility about the limits of human understanding."

"Mathematics provides the grammar that allows us to speak about the fundamental nature of reality."

"The greatest gift of science is not technology but the expansion of human consciousness."

"Nature does not negotiate with our preferences; it simply follows its own mathematical laws."

"Every successful scientific theory predicts phenomena that would never have been imagined without it."

"The coherence of the natural world at all scales suggests that reality has a rational foundation."

"Understanding nature requires both the rigor of mathematics and the creativity of the human imagination."

"The most important moments in science come when our theories fail to match reality."

"Nature's constants are not accidents but clues pointing toward a deeper unity in the structure of reality."

"The physicist seeks not merely to describe the world but to understand why the world is the way it is."

"Beauty in a mathematical equation often signals that we are on the right track toward understanding nature."

"The interconnectedness revealed by modern physics suggests that the universe is fundamentally holistic."

"Science advances when brave individuals challenge the consensus and follow where evidence leads."

"The laws of nature are written in a language so beautiful that it can only be the work of profound intelligence."

"Understanding one small corner of nature deeply teaches us more than knowing many corners superficially."

"The task ahead is to find in the chaos of nature the underlying order that makes all things comprehensible."

"The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it."

"A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it."

"When you get to heaven, God will not ask you what you learned but what you did with what you learned."

"The problem of consciousness is the problem of life."

"Science began with wonder; we must not lose wonder as science advances."

"The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees."

"Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe."

"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too."

"The most important tool of theoretical physics is the wastebasket."

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

"The answer is yes, but what was the question?"