There are questions which illuminate, and there are those that destroy. I was always taught to ask the first kind.
Isidor Isaac RabiAs yet, if a man has no feeling for art he is considered narrow-minded, but if he has no feeling for science this is considered quite normal. This is a fundamental weakness.
Isidor Isaac RabiIt was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this.
Isidor Isaac RabiMost new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious.
Isidor Isaac RabiWe must also teach science not as the bare body of fact, but more as human endeavor in its historic context-in the context of the effects of scientific thought on every kind of thought. We must teach it as an intellectual pursuit rather than as a body of tricks.
Isidor Isaac RabiPhysics is an otherworld thing, it requires a taste for things unseen, even unheard of- a high degree of abstraction... These faculties die off somehow when you grow up... profound curiosity happens when children are young. I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race... Once you are sophisticated, you know too much- far too much. Pauli once said to me, "I know a great deal. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.".
Isidor Isaac Rabi