Octavio Paz: "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz se hizo monja para poder pensar"

“Most people avoid thinking if they can, some of us are addicted to thinking, but Von Neumann actually enjoyed thinking, maybe even to the exclusion of everything else.” 

― Edward Teller

    

“When you get to the end of all the light that you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.” 
― Edward Teller

“Engineers are, by definition, people whose work is dedicated to making people's lives easier; or, as people used to say, whose work is dedicated to progress.” 
― Edward Teller, Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey In Science And Politics

“Today's science is tomorrow's technology.” 
― Edward Teller, The Legacy Of Hiroshima

“I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Max Planck (Nobel Prize 1918), von Laue (Nobel Prize 1914) and Heisenberg (Nobel Prize 1932). Paul Dirac (Nobel Prize 1933) was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as John von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed me.
… But Einstein’s understanding was deeper even than von Neumann’s. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann’s. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of von Neumann’s brilliance, he never produced anything as original.
–Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize Physics 1963)