Isidor Rabi Quotes

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

Society is one word, but many things.

I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately - like Joseph Campbell - that has made me realize that people in our cultural, especially in the liberal community, often go in search of a foe. It's like we always need a hill to climb up or something to push against, or we feel as if we're not working constructively in the world.

It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non-market aspects of society.

A crowd, whether it be a dangerous mob, or an amiably joyous gathering at a picnic is not a community. It has a mind, but no institutions, no organizations, no coherent unity, no history, no traditions.

The scientific community says that if you even mention God as causes of anything scientific, you're gone.

The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.

We shouldn't be willy-nilly creating potential human life just to satisfy the urges of the scientific community.

Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

There are so many ways to help, by either sharing your skills or expertise, joining our board of directors or advisory boards, and donating. Regardless of what or how you share with ISF, we recognize that we don't have all the answers, and that solutions lie not in commonality but in diversity. Welcoming a broad range of thinkers, creators, and doers is what makes this organization thrive.

Perhaps the most difficult ethical problem of the scientific community arises not so much from conflict with other subcultures as from its own success. Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.

Where else could one find such a perfect combination of American values -- racism, militarism, capitalism -- all packaged in one 'ideal' symbol, a woman.

What I found interesting is that it's human nature to have a family.

The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm's length because it's an inconvenient truth, because they don't want to accept that it's a moral imperative.

One of the author's most ancient roles is to call the community to account for its hypocrisies and bad faith.

Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists. If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.

People don't talk to each other. You're alone with your television set or internet. But you can't have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call "secondary organizations," places where people can get together, plan, talk and develop ideas. You don't do it alone.

The family is where we are formed as people. Every family is a brick in the building of society

You have to organize, organize, organize, and build and build, and train and train, so that there is a permanent, vibrant structure of which people can be part.

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world... The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us.

People are never so likely to be wrong as when they are organized. And they never have so little freedom. Perhaps that is why the people at large keep their freedom. People can be manipulated only when they are organized.

The society which we have built can in no way be termed "state socialism."The social organization which we have created can be termed a Soviet, socialist organization which has not yet been quite completed, but is in its root a socialist organization of society. The foundation of this society is public ownership.

In the past, when I saw bike messengers, I would just see them as individuals. Then, I realized that they're all tied together.

I wanted to write about the time when science became modern, around the 1950s. Right after physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, science started being so politicized and used as such a political weapon. When my father, who is a scientist, tells me about those years, I get a competing portrait of people who were expected to behave normally and be decent respectable members of society and who were also allowed this freedom to think in big and expansive ways. Now, when you think about people who work in labs, they're allowed to be socially inept in a very fundamental way.

Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher. A community of minds, reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.