Edward Teller Quotes

When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

Two paradoxes are better than one they may even suggest a solution.

Today's science is tomorrow's technology.

Engineers are, by definition, people whose work is dedicated to making people's lives easier; or, as people used to say, whose work is dedicated to progress.

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty until found effective.

When you get to the end of all the light that you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.

When you get to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

When you get to the end of all light you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown,faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on,or you will be taught how to fly.

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist’s job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist’s job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives.

I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Max Planck, Max von Laue, and Wemer Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother-in-Iaw; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. And I have known many of the brightest younger scientists. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jancsi von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men, and no one ever disputed me. [...] But Einstein's understanding was deeper than even Jancsi von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything so original.

When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.

Nationalism has little to contribute today except further suffering.

Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

Si alguna vez surge una raza mentalmente sobrehumana —dijo en cierta ocasión Edward Teller, el creador de la bomba de hidrógeno—, sus miembros se parecerán a Johnny von Neumann.

Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.

If a mentally superhuman race ever develops, its members will resemble Johnny von Neumann,” Edward Teller once said. “If you enjoy thinking, your brain develops. And that is what von Neumann did. He enjoyed the functioning of his brain.

Scientists and administrators such as Edward Teller, Lewis Strauss, and Ernest Lawrence, with their fullthroated militarism and anti-communism, pushed American scientists and their institutions toward a nearly complete and subservient devotion to American military interests.

Out of the prospering but vulnerable Hungarian Jewish middle class came no fewer than seven of the twentieth century’s most exceptional scientists: in order of birth, Theodor von Kármán, George de Hevesy, Michael Polanyi, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller.

Early in April 1933, the German government passed a law declaring that Jews (defined as anyone with a Jewish grandparent) could not hold an official position, including at the Academy or at the universities. Among those forced to flee were fourteen Nobel laureates and twenty-six of the sixty professors of theoretical physics in the country. Fittingly, such refugees from fascism who left Germany or the other countries it came to dominate—Einstein, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf, Hans Bethe, Lise Meitner, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Otto Stern, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, and others—helped to assure that the Allies rather than the Nazis first developed the atom bomb. Planck

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate...Hydrogen bombs will not produce themselves.

Most people avoid thinking if they can, some of us are addicted to thinking, but Von Neumann actually enjoyed thinking, maybe even to the exclusion of everything else.

Castle Bravo had been built according to the “Teller-Ulam” scheme—named for its co-designers, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam—which meant, unlike with the far less powerful atomic bomb, this hydrogen bomb had been designed to hold itself together for an extra hundred-millionth of a second, thereby allowing its hydrogen isotopes to fuse and create a chain reaction of nuclear energy, called fusion, producing a potentially infinite amount of power, or yield. “What this meant,” Freedman explains, was that there was “a one-in-one-million chance that, given how much hydrogen [is] in the earth’s atmosphere, when Castle Bravo exploded, it could catch the earth’s atmosphere on fire. Some scientists were extremely nervous. Some made bets about the end of the world.

Von Neumann at six joked with his father in classical Greek and had a truly photographic memory: he could recite entire chapters of books he had read.392 Edward Teller, like Einstein before him, was exceptionally late in learning—or choosing—to talk.393 His grandfather warned his parents that he might be retarded, but when Teller finally spoke, at three, he spoke in complete sentences.

If to a poet a physicist may speak Freely, as though we shared a common tongue, For "peace in our time" I should hardly seek By means that once proved wrong. It seems the Muscovite Has quite a healthy, growing appetite. We can't be safe; at least we can be right. Some bombs may help - perhaps a bomb-proof cellar, But surely not the Chamberlain umbrella. The atom is now big; the world is small. Unfortunately, we have conquered space. If war does come, it comes to all, To every distant place. Will people have the dash That Britons had when their world seemed to crash Before a small man with a small mustache? You rhyme the atoms to amuse and charm us - Your counsel should inspire, and not disarm us. (Teller's reply to an anonymous British man's poem/message (that Americans are too belligerent), both in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists).

Dr. Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and a founder of the “Star Wars” missile defense system, proposed seeding the upper atmosphere with millions of tons of sulfur or other heavy metals to create a cloud cover to deflect sun rays and prevent further heating of the earth. Some scientists warned such a program would turn blue skies milky white and perhaps cause droughts and further ozone depletion. Teller admitted the difficulty in persuading the public to allow a program that would pollute the air with metal particles, many known to be harmful to humans.

on his first visit to the Los Alamos Tech Area, when he had encountered von Neumann discussing theory with dark, intense Edward Teller, the “tremendously long formulae on the blackboard” had scared him. “Seeing all these complications of analysis, I was dumbfounded, fearing I would never be able to contribute anything.” But the equations stayed on the board from day to day, which meant to Ulam that the pace of invention was relatively slow, and he soon regained confidence.1340 “I found out that the main ability to have was a visual, and also an almost tactile, way to imagine the physical situations, rather than a merely logical picture of the problems.

Cecile was teaching in Berkeley and I was [at Livermore]. He probably had, could have had, some influence on Teller, [for] Teller was quite generous in allowing me one whole semester off to be at Berkeley to work on something and also a semester off at the Institute for Advanced Study. Then I won the Gravity Research Foundation first prize.

Teller would pay dearly for what he had said. Later that summer, on a visit to Los Alamos, Teller spotted an old friend, Bob Christy, in the dining hall. Walking over to greet him with outstretched hand, Teller was stunned when Christy refused to shake hands and abruptly turned his back. Standing close by was a furious Rabi, who said, “I won’t shake your hand, either, Edward.” Stunned, Teller went back to his hotel room and packed his bags.

UNLIKE LAWRENCE, Edward Teller had no hesitations about testifying. On April 22, six days before his testimony, Teller had an hour-long conversation with an AEC public information officer, Charter Heslep. In the course of the conversation, Teller expressed his deep animosity to Oppenheimer and the “Oppie machine.” A way had to be found, Teller believed, to destroy Oppenheimer’s influence. Heslep’s report to Strauss includes the following paragraph: “Since the case is being heard on a security basis, Teller wonders if some way can be found to ‘deepen the charges’ to include a documentation of the ‘consistently bad advice’ that Oppenheimer has given, going all the way back to the end of the war in 1945.” Heslep added that “Teller feels deeply that this ‘unfrocking’ must be done or else— regardless of the outcome of the current hearing—scientists may lose their enthusiasm for the [atomic weapons] program.

I’m not a fortune-teller!” Lupe said, but Juan Diego didn’t translate this. “The woman you want is Soledad,” Vargas said to Edward Bonshaw. “What woman? I don’t want a woman!” the new missionary cried; he’d imagined that Dr. Vargas had misunderstood what a vow of celibacy entailed. “Not a woman for you, Mr. Celibacy,” Vargas said. “I mean the woman you need to talk to, on behalf of the kids. Soledad is the woman who looks after the kids at the circus—she’s the lion tamer’s wife.

Characteristically, however, Oppenheimer never took the time to develop anything so elegant as a theory of the phenomenon, leaving this achievement to others decades later. And the question remains: Why? Personality and temperament appear to be critical. Robert instantly saw the flaws in any idea almost as soon as he had conceived it. Whereas some physicists—Edward Teller immediately comes to mind—boldly and optimistically promoted all of their new ideas, regardless of their flaws, Oppenheimer’s rigorous critical faculties made him profoundly skeptical. “Oppie was always pessimistic about all the ideas,” recalled Serber. Turned on himself, his brilliance denied him the dogged conviction that is sometimes necessary for pursuing and developing original theoretical insights. Instead, his skepticism invariably propelled him on to the next problem.5 Having made the initial creative leap, in this case to black-hole theory, Oppenheimer quickly moved on to another new topic, meson theory.

TWO WEEKS after Oppenheimer wrote his June 16 memo summarizing the views of the science panel, Edward Teller came to him with a copy of a petition that was circulating throughout the Manhattan Project’s facilities. Drafted by Leo Szilard, the petition urged President Truman not to use atomic weapons on Japan without a public statement of the terms of surrender: “. . . the United States shall not resort to the use of atomic bombs in this war unless the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender. . . .” Over the next few weeks, Szilard’s petition garnered the signatures of 155 Manhattan Project scientists. A counter-petition mustered only two signatures. In a separate July 12, 1945, Army poll of 150 scientists in the project, seventy-two percent favored a demonstration of the bomb’s power as against its military use without prior warning. Even so, Oppenheimer expressed real anger when Teller showed him Szilard’s petition. According to Teller, Oppie began disparaging Szilard and his cohorts: “What do they know about Japanese psychology? How can they judge the way to end the war?” These were judgments better left in the hands of men like Stimson and General Marshall. “Our conversation was brief,” Teller wrote in his memoirs. “His talking so harshly about my close friends and his impatience and vehemence greatly distressed me. But I readily accepted his decision. . . .

Dr. Edward Teller, "Father" of the hydrogen bomb.

Towards the end of World War II, Theodore von Karman had developed a liquid propellant research rocket at Cal Tech, which he named the Corporal...During the test in which a modified version of the Corporal had reached 80,000 feet, a general who was also observing the test asked von Karman how much higher the Corporal could go. Von Karman immediately replied, "Only to Colonel. Beyond that they don't work any more.

Something else apart from this heady fusion draws us in to Nile Shadows, though, and that’s a certain compulsive quality that, as in all great novels, appears to be beyond the author’s control. On the one hand Whittemore is the master story teller, weaving his tale of good and evil with its great cast of characters over its great span of time, while on the other he is also telling a much simpler story, a story about himself, one feels, and telling it again and again.

Dr. John Archibald Wheeler, called the father of the hydrogen bomb in some circles (others attribute paternity in that regrettable case to Dr. Edward Teller) has repeatedly urged that the simplest, most honest explanation of quantum paradoxes holds that the known universe results from the observations of those who observe it. This "observer-created universe" bears an uncanny resemblance to some of our data about "self-fulfilling prophecies," it begins to appear.

Since at least the time of Einstein’s first letter to FDR, Edward Teller had debated within himself the morality of weapons work. His life had twice been cruelly uprooted by totalitarianism. He understood Germany’s frightening technological advantages at the outset of the war. “I came to the United States in 1935,” he notes. “ . . . The handwriting was on the wall. At that time, I believed that Hitler would conquer the world unless a miracle happened.”1318 But pure science still pacified him.

Hungary was drawn along in the same vortex of intellectual excitement and scientific progress that enveloped the rest of the empire. An extraordinary constellation of the twentieth century’s leading physicists and mathematicians were the product of its equally exceptional educational system at the turn of the century—John von Neumann, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Theodor von Kármán, Paul Erdös, and George Pólya, among many others. All came from Hungary’s Jewish middle class, all would flee Hitler’s Europe, and many would end up working during the Second World War for the Manhattan Project, helping to ensure that America, and not Germany, would be the first to build the atomic bomb. The educational reforms instituted in the era of ascendant liberal values in the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire emphasized creative thinking and experimental curiosity over rote learning.

_____________________________________ “When you get to the end of all the light you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.” Edward Teller

Charles T. Munger is fond of saying that there are “more banks than bankers.” A competitive advantage based on a willingness to make loans in an instant would be anathema to old-fashioned bankers. Of particular concern to us is the extent to which Irish bankers engage in the hard-sell to investors. One of them declared at the conference we recently attended: “I am here unashamedly to sell you X bank!” This rather goes against our preference for bankers as cautious individuals, obsessed with long-term downside risks. As we have seen in many other businesses, an obsession with growth, combined with overpromotion, is likely to end in tears. As to when this will happen, we must wait for time, Ireland’s proverbial story teller.

Oppenheimer had also discussed Fermi’s idea with Edward Teller. The isotope the men identified that “appears to offer the highest promise” was strontium, probably strontium 90, which the human body takes up in place of calcium and deposits dangerously and irretrievably in bone.

Edward Teller, like Einstein before him, was exceptionally late in learning—or choosing—to talk.393 His grandfather warned his parents that he might be retarded, but when Teller finally spoke, at three, he spoke in complete sentences.

A plethora of the continent’s brightest lights had also taken flight. Not just Einstein, but Hans Bethe, Max Born, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, Otto Stern, Lise Meitner, Robert Frisch, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Maria Goeppert-Mayer—the list went on and on.

Because the Nazis considered theoretical physics and quantum mechanics too abstruse and “Jewish,” they had replaced them years before with a more homegrown and homespun curriculum—the rudimentary Deutsche Physik—and as a result of the switch, half of the country’s nuclear scientists had been relieved of, or driven from, their posts. A plethora of the continent’s brightest lights had also taken flight. Not just Einstein, but Hans Bethe, Max Born, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, Otto Stern, Lise Meitner, Robert Frisch, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Maria Goeppert-Mayer—the list went on and on.

In fact, it took the resources of three countries to produce the bomb: the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. But there was more to it than that. In some sense it took some of the most valuable scientific talent of all Europe to do it. Consider this partial list: the Hungarians John von Neumann, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller; the Germans Hans Bethe and Rudolf Peierls; the Poles Stanislaw Ulam and Joseph Rotblat; the Austrians Victor Weisskopf and Otto Frisch; the Italians Enrico Fermi and Emilio Segrè; Felix Bloch from Switzerland; and, from Denmark, the Bohrs, Niels and his son Aage. This talent, the B-29 heavy bomber program that could deliver the bombs, plus Manhattan Project efforts—all together cost more than fifty billion in today’s dollars. Wilhelm

It is often claimed that knowledge multiplies so rapidly that nobody can follow it. I believe this is incorrect. At least in science it is not true. The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler. This, of course, goes contrary to what everyone accepts” – Edward Teller.

As early as 1959, at a symposium called “Energy and Man,” organized by the American Petroleum Institute to mark the centenary of the global oil business, the physicist Edward Teller told the industry’s most important executives, “Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth.” The temperature, Teller predicted, would rise, and when it did, “there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise.”3 But these kinds of warnings were easily ignored.