Wolfgang Pauli

I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.

— Wolfgang Pauli

Later, however, I came to recognize the objective nature of these dreams or fantasies … Thus it was that I gradually came to acknowledge that such fantasies or dreams are neither meaningless nor purely arbitrary but rather convey a sort of "second meaning" of the terms applied.

— Wolfgang Pauli

The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.

— Wolfgang Pauli

It seems significant that according to quantum physics the indestructibility of energy on one hand — which expresses its timeless existence — and the appearance of energy in space and time on the other hand correspond to two contradictory (complementary) aspects of reality. In fact, both are always present, but in individual cases the one or the other may be more pronounced.

— Wolfgang Pauli

Although I have no objection to accepting the existence of relatively constant psychic contents that survive personal ego, it must always be born in mind that we have no way of knowing what these contents are actually like "as such." All we can observe is their effect on other living people, whose spiritual level and whose personal unconscious crucially influence the way these contents actually manifest themselves.

— Wolfgang Pauli

Both of us [seem] to agree that the future of Jung's ideas is not with [psycho-] therapy... but with a unitarian, holistic concept of nature and the position of man in it.

— Wolfgang Pauli

"The fact of the existence of two theories [causal and acausal] that contradict each other in Jung … corresponds psychologically to the vascillation between 3 and 4.

— Wolfgang Pauli

It is always the older that emanates the new one.

— Wolfgang Pauli

The designation "Jungian Psychology" is actually already unscientific sectarianism. I only acknowledge C. G. Jung's contribution to the general psychology of the unconscious.

— Wolfgang Pauli

This is to show the world that I can paint like Titian. [A big drawing of a rectangle] Only technical details are missing.

— Wolfgang Pauli

The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level.

— Wolfgang Pauli

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.

— Wolfgang Pauli

I don't mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think.

— Wolfgang Pauli

When I was young, I thought I was the best formalist of my time. I thought I was a revolutionary. When the big problems would come, I would solve them and write about them. The big problems came and passed by, others solved them and wrote about them. I was a classicist and not a revolutionary.

— Wolfgang Pauli

God made the bulk; surfaces were invented by the devil.

— Wolfgang Pauli

The setup of the book as far as printing and paper are concerned is splendid.

— Wolfgang Pauli

A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, “You look very unhappy”; whereupon I answered fiercely, “How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?”.

— Wolfgang Pauli

One shouldn’t work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether any semiconductors exist.

— Wolfgang Pauli

I cannot believe God is a weak left-hander.

— Wolfgang Pauli