Der Optimist glaubt, dass unsere die beste mögliche Welt ist. Der Pessimist weiß es.
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist knows it.
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
Wissenschaft ist nicht alles, aber sie ist wunderschön.
Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.
Die Menschen dieser Welt müssen sich verbünden, oder sie werden untergehen.
The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.
Niemand sollte unsere Universitäten verlassen, ohne zu wissen, wie wenig er weiß.
No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.
Auf den Straßen spielen Kinder, die meine größten Probleme der Physik lösen könnten, weil sie Sinne wahrnehmen, die ich schon lange verloren habe.
There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
Immer glücklich sein zu wollen, ist, als würde man eine Maschine bauen, mit dem einzigen Ziel, dass sie keinen Krach macht.
To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.
Oktober 1929
Ich brauche die Physik mehr als ich Freunde brauche.
I need physics more than friends.
Die Atombombe hat die Vorstellung künftiger Kriege unerträglich gemacht. Sie hat uns diese letzten paar Schritte zu einer Grenze geführt, hinter der völlig unbekanntes Land liegt.
The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.
Wenn es zehn Jahre dauert, um jemandes Fehler zu korrigieren, hat derjenige einiges erreicht.
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.
It was evening when we came to the river
With a low moon over the desert
that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten,
what with the cold and the sweating
and the ranges barring the sky.
And when we found it again,
In the dry hills down by the river,
half withered, we had
the hot winds against us.
There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.
Then we heard the oars creaking
and afterwards, I remember,
the boatman called us.
We did not look back at the mountains.
With a low moon over the desert
that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten,
what with the cold and the sweating
and the ranges barring the sky.
And when we found it again,
In the dry hills down by the river,
half withered, we had
the hot winds against us.
There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.
Then we heard the oars creaking
and afterwards, I remember,
the boatman called us.
We did not look back at the mountains.
Juni 1928
