A scientist should be the happiest of men.

There's life all over this universe, but the only life in the solar system is on earth, and in the whole universe we are the only men.

Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.

Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.

It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.

All War Departments are now Defense Departments. This is all part of the doubletalk of our time. The aggressor is always on the other side.

I tell my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective.

I watched something vanish, as if I was in a dream from which I couldn't wake.

Of two duties we must choose the greater, though of two sins we must choose neither (556).

Just because you become a mother, it doesn't mean you lose who you are.

[Gertrude Stein] really needed someone like Virgil Thomson, whom she respected, to sit on her a bit and make her devise some plot.

A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can't therefore argue that the net doesn't exist. Just ask the fish.

Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.

I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.

Personal mastery teaches us to choose. Choosing is a courageous act: picking the results and actions which you will make into your destiny.

For a while I didn't have a car . . . I had a helicopter . . . no place to park it, so I just tied it to a lamp post and left it running. [slow glance upward]

...to see the light. (Last words)