Edward Teller Quotes

Craving security is the cause of insecurity. Freedom is knowing that the only point of arrival is now.

The safest place to be is always halfway into your future, without even knowing what it is.

I've had to make really big decisions, knowing the results were not always in my control. Through these moments, I've learned to be daring and take risks but understand that everything always happens for a reason.

I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now

There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.

Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events.

Fear is the ultimate cause of failure and disappointment.

And so that is the question I leave you with in this final: What is your cause for hope?

I don't want to make promises, not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out.

What is literature, and why do I try to write about it? I don’t know. Likewise, I don’t know why I go on living, most of the time. But this not knowing is precisely what I want to preserve. As readers, the closest way we can engage with a literary work is to protect its indeterminacy; to return ourselves and it to a place that precludes complete recognition. Really, when I’m reading, all I want is to stand amazed in front of an unknown object at odds with the world.

Reflect frequently upon the instability of things, and how very fast the scenes of nature are shifted. Matter is in perpetual flux. Change is always and everywhere at work; it strikes through causes and effects, and leaves nothing fixed and permanent.

Paranoia plays into all of us. Trust is a terrifying idea of not knowing who we can rely on.

You have to take calculated risks in life.

With insufficient data it is easy to go wrong.

I do have confidence that we're gonna be able to get it right. But it's not gonna be overnight. And there's no silver bullets to this. The fact of the matter is, is that we are suffering from a massive hangover from a binge of risk taking.

...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

I highly recommend inviting the worst-case scenario into your life.

The thing I can't remember is, what came first? Us or the book?

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.

We are playing Russian roulette with features of the planet’s atmosphere that will profoundly impact generations to come. How long are we willing to gamble?

All of life is the exercise of risk.