Quote #14

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

More from Enrico Fermi

  1. Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.
  2. Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium m…
  3. The fundamental point in fabricating a chain reacting machine is of course to see to it that each fission produces a certain number of neut…
  4. He was simply unable to let things be foggy. Since they always are, this kept him pretty active.
  5. Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they already know.
  6. If Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's …
  7. Never be first; try to be second.
  8. There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

All Enrico Fermi quotes