Eugene Wigner

“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”

“It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.”

“The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I was infuriated by this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery.”

“It is not the task of the physicist to explain the 'why' of things—the ultimate causes. He is concerned only with the 'how'—with the description of the course of physical phenomena.”

“The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious.”

“Physics does not endeavor to explain nature. In fact, the great success of physics is due to a restriction of its objectives: it only endeavors to explain the regularities in the behavior of objects.”

“The laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics.”

“The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely.”

“If you want to have a happy life, you should not be too concerned with success. You should be concerned with deserving success, and even then, not too much.”

“Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, it may be emotionally satisfactory to a few, but it is not a workable theory.”