Isidor Isaac Rabi

There are questions which illuminate, and there are those that destroy. I was always taught to ask the first kind.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up and they keep their curiosity.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin-the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

The scientist does not defy the universe. He accepts it. It is his dish to savor, his realm to explore; it is…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

Physics is an otherworld thing, it requires a taste for things unseen, even unheard of- a high degree of abstraction... These faculties…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

As yet, if a man has no feeling for art he is considered narrow-minded, but if he has no feeling for science…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

“Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

“When [Niels] Bohr is about everything is somehow different. Even the dullest gets a fit of brilliancy.”

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

Science itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way ... Only the…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

If you decide you don't have to get A's, you can learn an enormous amount in college.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

[Science is] a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe itself.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

There isn't a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined organization.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school,…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

You know that, according to quantum theory, if two particles collide with enough energy you can, in principle, with an infinitesimal probability,…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

We must also teach science not as the bare body of fact, but more as human endeavor in its historic context-in the…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids ?

— Isidor Isaac Rabi

It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this. Upon seeing a distorted…

— Isidor Isaac Rabi