Fritz Zwicky famous quotes

Astronomers are spherical bastards. No matter how you look at them they are just bastards.
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Looks #Matter #Astronomers

Mountains were once my big adventure but is is over since a long time; I still dream from the wonderful days sometimes, read also a few pages from a mountain book. But the thought of doing again active mountain climbing has faded.
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Dream #Book #Adventure

I have a good idea every two years. Give me a topic, I will give you the idea! [Reputed to have been a remark made to the head of his department at Caltech.]
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Years #Ideas #Two

To eliminate the discrepancy between men's plans and the results achieved, a new approach is necessary. Morphological thinking suggests that this new approach cannot be realized through increased teaching of specialized knowledge. This morphological analysis suggests that the essential fact has been overlooked that every human is potentially a genius. Education and dissemination of knowledge must assume a form which allows each student to absorb whatever develops his own genius, lest he become frustrated. The same outlook applies to the genius of the peoples as a whole.
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Teaching #Knowledge #Men

With all reserve we advance the view that a supernova represents the transition of an ordinary star into a neutron star consisting mainly of neutrons. Such a star may possess a very small radius and an extremely high density. As neutrons can be packed much more closely than ordinary nuclei and electrons, the gravitational packing energy in a cold neutron star may become very large, and under certain conditions may far exceed the ordinary nuclear packing fractions...
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Stars #Views #Energy

Every evening, I come home tired and have just enough energy to fill out the endless tax forms, to pay bills, not to let my house neglected and to hear the radio concert for an hour.
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Home #Tired #House

I soon became convinced... that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the universe really consists of.
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Exercise #Brain #Firsts

To base the unexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature onto an other miracle, God, is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker.
-- Fritz Zwicky

#Miracle #Serious #Wonder

Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of federal aid to education and there you will find the enemy of the Negro, the coalition of Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans that seek to dominate the Congress.

Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.

You know, you look at the chaos in the conservative camp right now, it's only too tempting to blame it all on pot. But in fact, the Reagan revolution owes a lot to Reefer. For one thing, it's made the symptoms of senility socially acceptable.

In Britain, you never get away from the fact that you're a foreigner. In the U.S., the view is it doesn't matter where you come from.

I love love stories, no matter how dark.

It is a matter of shame that in the morning the birds should be awake earlier than you.

No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.

OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

As an astronomer in the true sense of the term, Sir John Herschel stood before all his contemporaries. Nay, he stood almost alone.

We became astronomers thinking we were studying the universe, and now we learn that we are just studying the 5 or 10 percent that is luminous.