18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

The problem with parents is that they're adults.

A quarrel between friends, when made up, adds a new tie to friendship.

The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.

Those who criticize the most typically end up solving the least.

We should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.

The first step to get people interested in history is to wonder how things could have been different.

I can understand the dilemma of growing up in a bubble, and then not knowing what to do when unemployment beckons and reality bursts in.

Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.

Our entire biological system, the brain, and the Earth itself, work on the same frequencies.

Wealth is the product of energy times intelligence: energy turned into artifacts that advantage human life.