We scientists are clever – too clever – are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!
The same equations have the same solutions.
Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad – but it does not carry instructions on how to use it.
Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this.
It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is.
The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.
We need to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed. It’s OK to say, “I don’t know.”
The world is a dynamic mess of jiggling things.
Outside of their particular area of expertise scientists are just as dumb as the next person.
So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton’s equations, are reversible.
Unless a thing can be defined by measurement, it has no place in a theory. And since an accurate value of the momentum of a localized particle cannot be defined by measurement it therefore has no place in the theory.
Everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected.
Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best.
A poet once said, “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.
The exception tests the rule.
The Quantum Universe has a quotation from me in every chapter – but it’s a damn good book anyway.
Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naive ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.
There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.
Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.
When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you’ve told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway.