Swiss Quotes

Thus, after finishing high school, I started with high expectations and enthusiasm to study chemistry at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Soon, I knew that I would become a chemist, rather than a composer.

On the theoretical side, I was concerned with stochastic resonance.

My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city.

In recent years, more and more of my time has become absorbed by administrative work for the research council of ETH-Z of which I am presently the president.

I wanted to understand the secrets behind my chemical experiments and behind the processes in nature.

I thus decided to leave the university forever and tried to find an industrial job in the United States.

I recognized that teaching and research institutions vitally depend on the involvement of active scientists also in management functions.

I became almost immediately fascinated by the possibilities of trying out all conceivable reactions with them, some leading to explosions, others to unbearable poisoning of the air in our house, frightening my parents.

However, I survived and started to read all chemistry books that I could get a hand on, first some 19th century books from our home library that did not provide much reliable information, and then I emptied the rather extensive city library.

A brief visit to Nepal started my insatiable love for Asian art.

I am not surprised that they show no intention to follow in my footsteps, although if I had a second chance myself, I would certainly try to repeat my present career.

Experiments were not attempted at that time, we did not believe in the usefulness of the concept anyway, and I finished my thesis in 1962 with a feeling like an artist balancing on a high rope without any interested spectators.

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

People's fates are simplified by their names.

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.