Wigner, Eugene

"The most productive scientists are those who remain perpetual students of nature."

"Complexity often masks an underlying simplicity that we have not yet discerned."

"The capacity to wonder at nature is the true beginning of scientific inquiry."

"Science progresses through the accumulated efforts of generations of dedicated minds."

"The relationship between theory and reality is the eternal puzzle of physics."

"To do great science, one must be willing to be persistently, productively confused."

"Our understanding of nature is always provisional, subject to revision with new evidence."

"The universe operates with a parsimony of principles that belies its complexity."

"Good scientists listen more carefully to nature than to the opinions of their peers."

"The experience of profound confusion often precedes profound clarity in science."

"Beauty in mathematics is often a sign that we are approaching deeper truth about nature."

"The greatest gift science offers is the ability to see the world with new understanding."

"Physics reveals that the universe is fundamentally interconnected and interdependent."

"Success in research requires both meticulous care and bold imaginative leaps."

"The scientist must cultivate a balance between skepticism and openness to new ideas."

"The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, upon himself and upon his colleagues."

"A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."

"The task of the theoretical physicist is not to invent the laws of nature but to discover them."

"Mathematics has beauties of its own which rival those of music and poetry."

"We cannot avoid the appearance of some miraculousness in the laws of nature because we cannot deduce them from first principles."

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."

"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge."

"The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece."

"One of the great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century was that physics has limits."

"Symmetries of nature are responsible for the conservation laws that physicists cherish."

"The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve."

"In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself—nature does it for you."

"The beauty of mathematical laws is that they apply to the smallest particles and the largest galaxies."

"Science is not a collection of laws, a catalogue of unrelated facts. It is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts."

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."