Eugene Wigner Quotes

Nature hates calculators.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.

In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.

Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web?

When I look out the window at my backyard, I can't think of anything interesting to ask. I mean, it's green, it's growing-but nothing occurs to me that any concentrated effort of thought could possibly enlighten. Whereas in economic, statistical, or mathematical kinds of things, I can think lots of questions.

Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words.

I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered.

If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent.

The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.

The paradox of knowledge is not confined to the small, atomic scale; on the contrary, it is as cogent on the scale of man, and even of the stars.

Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.

It's all very simple, or else it's all very complex, or perhaps it's neither, or both.

Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

I like to be alone. I am focused on what I am doing. I feel the nature and I feel my body. It's so simple.

I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Nature's way is simple and easy, but men prefer the intricate and artificial.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

To the scientist, the universality of physical laws makes the cosmos a marvelously simple place. By comparison, human nature-the psychologist's domain-is infinitely more daunting.

Of the Surface of Things In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four Hills and a cloud.

It's simple until you make it complicated.

One rule is to not use complicated techniques unless they are necessary to achieve your goal. First, use simple movements, and if they don't work, then introduce the more complex ones.

The success of any trap lies in its fundamental simplicity. The reverse trap by the nature of its single complication must be swift and simpler still.

Simple mechanisms do not love.