EDWARD TELLER

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

I tried to contribute to the defeat of the Soviets. If I contributed 1%, it is 1% of something enormous.

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

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.

No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.

The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.

Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.

Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.

My experience has been in a short 77 years that in the end when you fight for a desperate cause and have good reasons to fight, you usually win.

Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.

I proved not only that stupidity is a general human property but that I possessed a full share of it.

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 people and with their ... representatives.

I think that our work contributed to the safety of the world.

Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors.

For the things we [scientists] are working on no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls. The accident that we worked out this terrible thing [nuclear weapons] should not give us the responsibility of having a voice in how it is to be used. The responsibility must in the end be shifted to the people as a whole and that can only be done by making the facts known.

We are Martians who have come to earth to change everything—and we are afraid we will not be so well received. So we try to keep it a secret, try to appear as Americans…But that we could not do because of our accent. So we settled in a country nobody ever has heard about and now we are claiming to be Hungarians.

Not only do wars create incredible suffering, but they engender deep hatreds that can last for generations.

Could we have avoided the tragedy of Hiroshima? Could we have started the atomic age with clean hands? No one knows. No one can find out.

I think that intellectuals who end up in hell will have to read page proofs and check indexes there.

No, I'm the infamous Edward Teller.

Knowing he [Bob Serber] was going to the [first atom bomb] test, I asked him how he planned to deal with the danger of rattlesnakes. He said, 'I'll take along a bottle of whiskey.' … I ended by asking, 'What would you do about those possibilities [of what unknown phenomena might cause a nuclear explosion to propagate in the atmosphere]?' Bob replied, 'Take a second bottle of whiskey.'

One may say that predictions are dangerous particularly for the future. If the danger involved in a prediction is not incurred, no consequence follows and the uncertainty principle is not violated.

We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.

By having simplified what is known, physicists have been led into realms which as yet are anything but simple. That at some time, they, too, will appear as simple consequences of a theory of which no one has yet dreamed is not a statement of fact.It is a statement of faith.