Talk:Enrico Fermi

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Unsourced[edit]

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Enrico Fermi. --Antiquary 20:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.
    • This is widely attributed to Fermi as early as the 1960s.[1][2] The saying was famous enough to make it into popular science articles by 1957,[3] and into political speeches by 1962.[4] It is first quoted in something close to its modern form in a 1953 nuclear physics textbook by Emilio Segrè, but without attribution.[5] Fermi was Segrè's doctoral advisor. However, I could not find a source from Fermi's lifetime (before 1954) that directly and unequivocally links the quote to him. Renerpho (talk) 22:54, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Never be first; try to be second.
    • After his paper on beta decay was turned down by the journal Nature because "it contained speculations which were too remote from reality".
  • Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they already know.
  • The fundamental point in fabricating a chain reacting machine is of course to see to it that each fission produces a certain number of neutrons and some of these neutrons will again produce fission.
  • Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.
    • Variant: It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.
  • A three standard deviation is a statistical fluctuation; a five standard deviation effect is a miracle. Quoted by Owen Chamberlain.
  • Nothing resembles a new phenomenon as much as a mistake. Anybody have a source attribution for this one?