The scientist does not defy the universe. He accepts it. It is his dish to savor, his realm to explore; it is his adventure and never-ending delight. It is complaisant and elusive but never dull. It is wonderful both in the small and in the large. In short, its exploration is the highest occupation for a gentleman.
Isidor Isaac RabiThere are questions which illuminate, and there are those that destroy. I was always taught to ask the first kind.
Isidor Isaac RabiIf you decide you don't have to get A's, you can learn an enormous amount in college.
Isidor Isaac RabiThere isn't a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined organization.
Isidor Isaac RabiScience itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way ... Only the graduate student, poor beast of burden that he is, can be expected to know a little of each. As the number of physicists increases, each specialty becomes more self-sustaining and self-contained. Such Balkanization carries physics, and indeed, every science further away, from natural philosophy, which, intellectually, is the meaning and goal of science.
Isidor Isaac Rabi