My rule is, when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you’re happy, don’t. Why spoil it? You’re probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you’d just spoil it to know it.
If science is to progress, what we need is the ability to experiment, honesty in reporting results – the results must be reported without somebody saying what they would like the results to have been – and finally – an important thing – the intelligence to interpret the results.
No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
Teach principles not formulas.
It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management.
Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.
We find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known with different degrees of certainty: “It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true”.
The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought.
Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question – to doubt – to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.
The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad!
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!
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
If you can’t explain something to a first year student, then you haven’t really understood it.
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter.
The only way to deep happiness is to do something you love to the best of your ability.
If all of mathematics disappeared, physics would be set back by exactly one week.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
We have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know.
We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.