It is not even misquoted?

[brooksmoses]

As one can readily find on Google, Wolfgang Pauli is said to have said, of an unclear paper, "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!" (This is not only not right, it is not even wrong!) But when did he say it, and where did that quote come from? I'm not having any luck finding it; the closest I can come to an original source is this biographical article in Biographical Memiors of Fellows of The Royal Society, which quotes him as saying "It is not even wrong" (in English), without detailed attribution, although the author generally says that it and several other things he quotes come either from "trusted sources" or from situations where he was personally present. Less pithily but along similar lines, the author also quotes him saying (to L. Landau, who after a long argument had asked Pauli to at least admit that what he was saying wasn't all nonsense), "Oh, no. Far from it. What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not."

In any case, does anyone know of an original source for the full version of the quote, and/or the German version?

Similarly, I can find dozens upon hundreds of places attributing, "There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true," to Neils Bohr, but none of them give any source for that either. Any leads?

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Can't help with sourcing, but damn, great quotes.

[ianhickson.livejournal.com]

Regarding "not even wrong": Wikipedia's page on the subject cites Rudolf Peierls' entry Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, 1900-1958 (PDF) in the Biographical Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society, Volume 5 (February 1960). In it, Peierls says (page 186):

Quite recently, a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly ‘It is not even wrong.’

The independently researched (see the first comment) blog post by Peter Woit comes to the same conclusion.

[ianhickson.livejournal.com]

Ok so after writing all that I reread your post and the sources that you cite are... the same ones I cite. So nevermind! I guess we came to the same conclusion. :-P

[eagle]

The Bohr quote is sourced by Wikiquotes to Hans Bohr, his son, in Neils Bohr : His Life and Work. A different version of the quote they have sourced to another book. Looks like he may not have written it down himself, but several people seem to agree that he said things like it.