Chemistry is good for fun - it's like baseball. It has its role for small children, but I can't see an adult being concerned with it.

Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this.

Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered.

Nature allows only experimental situations to occur which can be described within the framework of the formalism of quantum mechanics

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

We can be very sure that as we discover new aspects of the expanding and evolving universe, we will be startled and amazed once again.

This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

Harvard freshmen are smart, interested, and excited, and it's fun hearing their different perspectives and stuff that they will share.

No matter how closely we look, it is difficult to find a mental act that can take place without the support of some physical function.

Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of theorists into thinking that the job (interpreting quantum theory) was done 50 years ago.

If an apple was magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.

It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.

Once I wept for I had no shoes. Then I met a man with no feet, so I took his shoes. I mean, it wasn't as if he was going to need them.

What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.

Science doesn't in the slightest depend on trust. It depends completely on the belief that you can demonstrate something for yourself.

I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.

In big science, the role of the individual scientist must be carefully preserved. So is the one of original ideas and of contributions.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

Today the vacuum [of space] is not regarded as empty. It is a sea of dynamic energy, like the spray of foam near a turbulent waterfall.

Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

As the son of a Protestant Christian mother and a Shia Muslim father, I have nevertheless ended up without a religious bone in my body.

We unwittingly judge products by their boxes, books by their covers, and even corporation's annual reports by their nice glossy finish.

Democracies are slow to anger and hesitant to go to war: Voters don't want to sacrifice their children for the glory of a selfish king.

The secret of our success on planet Earth is space. Lots of it. Our solar system is a tiny island of activity in an ocean of emptiness.

The thing I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun that I'll ever have in my life.

NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.

It's easy to sleep floating around - it's very comfortable. But you have to be careful that you don't float into somebody or something!

We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence.

No one undertakes research in physics with the intention of winning a prize. It is the joy of discovering something no one knew before.

During my first year as a graduate student, we worked on a measurement of the isotope shift and hyperfine structure of mercury isotopes.

...consciousness is a coherent whole, which is never static or complete, but which is in an unending process of movement and unfoldment.

Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.

The stages of human development are to strive for: (1) Besitz [Possession] (2) Wissen [Knowledge] (3) Können [Ability] (4) Sein [Being].

The self is fundamentally an illusion arising as a reflection of the soul in matter, much as a clear lake at midnight reflects the moon.

We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.

Some, merely to contradict what I had said, did not scruple to cast doubt upon things they had seen with their own eyes again and again.

If you pursue an evenhanded policy between a cat and a mouse, do you help the mouse to survive - or allow the cat to eat half the mouse?

Yes, I was a parish priest for five years. I was a curate in a large working class parish in Bristol and the Vicar of a village in Kent.

Travel at faster than the speed of light certainly can have dramatic implications that are difficult to understand, such as time travel.

I started out working on supersymmetry. The theory predicts that for every particle we know about, there will be an additional particle.

Because Ernest Lawrence's award came in the war years, I had the unusual opportunity of attending his Nobel Prize presentation ceremony.

I agree, along with Carl Sagan, that we should eventually become a two planet species. Life is too precious to place on a single planet.

People confound, misuse, interchange thinking and speaking, not realizing that speaking is for communication and thinking is for action.

Nobody else took what I was doing seriously, so nobody would want to work with me. I was thought to be a bit eccentric and maybe cranky.

Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. But those of us who are not that tall have to choose!

The problem of creating something new, but which is consistent with everything which has been seen before, is one of extreme difficulty.

I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job.

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