Talk:Enrico Fermi

Unsourced

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)

• Albert! Stop telling God what to do.
  • Attributed response to the statement "God doesn't throw dice" derived from a comment by Albert Einstein to Max Born about Quantum mechanics. A similar remark is attributed to Niels Bohr.

• Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.
  • Quote Investigator ran an article about this quote in 2010,[1] but their investigation didn't go very far. They only say that it was given by BrainyQuote, and that Quote Investigator had found no compelling evidence that Fermi said these sentences (without any further details).
    BrainyQuote have probably taken it from Alan Lindsay Mackay's "A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations", which was published in 1991.[2] Of course the inclusion of the quote in that book is no proof that the attribution is correct. I then looked into the history of the quote myself, and here's what I found:
    The quote is widely attributed to Fermi as early as the 1960s.[3][4] It appears to have rapidly gained popularity during the second half of the 1950s. The saying was famous enough to make it into popular science articles by 1957 (claimed there to have been mentioned at a teacher conference about religion in 1956),[5] and into political speeches by 1962.[6] In 1956, a variant (Before your lecture I was very confused about NATO. Now I am still confused, but at a much higher level.) was quoted at a conference about NATO.[7] Another variant (I feel that this very complex matter has given rise to a whole new series of problems and at a much higher level of confusion) was used in a 1957 article about engineers.[8] The saying was clearly already evolving at that time, and other variants like while he is still confused, his confusion is much on a higher plane had also entered the political discourse by 1962.[9] By 1961, the saying appears to have been known well enough in the academic community that physics textbooks could refer to it in passing, assuming that the reader would be familiar with it.[10]
    It is first quoted in something close to its modern form in a 1953 nuclear physics textbook by Emilio Segrè, but without attribution.[11] Fermi was Segrè's doctoral advisor, and it is plausible that Segrè got it from Fermi. However, I could not find a source from Fermi's lifetime (before 1954) that directly links the quote to him. Renerpho (talk) 22:54, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• 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.

  This is definitely a Fermi quote; we just have the wrong Fermi. This was coined by Enrico's wife Laura, who worked as an author and historian. It first appears in her book "Atoms in the Family", University of Chicago Press, 1954, page 244. In context: Some men said the atomic bomb should never have been built; researchers should have stopped working when they had realized that the bomb was feasible. Enrico did not think this would have been a sensible solution. It is no good trying to stop knowledge from going forward. Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge. Besides, if they had not built an atomic bomb, if they had destroyed all the data they had found and collected, others would come in the near future who in their quest for truth would proceed on the same path and rediscover what had been obliterated. Then in whose hands would the atomic bomb be placed? Worse evils could be conceived than giving it to the Americans. -- This book, essentially a biography of Enrico, was published shortly after his death. Why the quote became attributed to Enrico directly, rather than to something Laura had written about him, I don't know. Alan L. Mackay's "Dictionary of Scientific Quotations", 1991, does so; curiously giving Laura's book as the source for the attribution.[12] In 1985, Martin Gardner correctly attributed it to Mrs. Fermi's biography of her husband.[13] However, wrong attributions (that is, to Enrico directly) appear as early as 1970.[14] Renerpho (talk) 00:36, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  • Variant: It is no good trying to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

    Same as above, just skipping part of the quote. Renerpho (talk) 00:36, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• A three standard deviation is a statistical fluctuation; a five standard deviation effect is a miracle. Quoted by Owen Chamberlain.

  Where does Owen Chamberlain quote this?

• Nothing resembles a new phenomenon as much as a mistake. Anybody have a source attribution for this one?

  None prior to 2012.[15] Renerpho (talk) 23:49, 12 November 2024 (UTC)