It was about three o'clock at night when the final result of the calculation [which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ... At first I was deeply shaken ... I was so excited that I could not think of sleep. So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock.

The exact sciences also start from the assumption that in the end it will always be possible to understand nature, even in every new field of experience, but that we may make no a priori assumptions about the meaning of the word understand.

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.

The basic idea is to shove all fundamental difficulties onto the neutron and to do quantum mechanics in the nucleus.

My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

Nonsense. Space is blue and birds fly through it.

Science clears the fields on which technology can build.