The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things...
That is the logical tight-rope on which we have to walk if we wish to interpret nature.
This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore.
But the real glory of science is that we can find a way of thinking such that the law is evident.
If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.
To decide upon the answer is not scientific. In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar ajar only.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. Upon identifying the reason for the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and his demonstration using immersion in iced water to show that O-rings grow brittle when cold.
There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation.
It turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.
But see that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.
There is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble.
Maybe that is why young people make success. They don’t know enough.
To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can.
People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!
I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys – but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries.
In fact the total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another and he is all right...
Mathematics is a language plus reasoning; it is like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.
In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?