[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review from cover to cover.

One of the absolute rules I learned in the war was, don't know anything you don't need to know, because if you ever get caught they will get it out of you.

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

A number of current theoretical explorations will turn out to be passing fancies...

Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes - even in a scientific text.

I knew all the time I was going to get through the war. It was completely irrational, a silly idea, but I was not going to lie down and get myself killed. I was going to get out of it.

The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture. If Mr. X, who knew where I was, was caught for some reason, I should move.

Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?

[Heisenberg's seminal 1925 paper initiating quantum mechanics marked] one of the great jumps—perhaps the greatest—in the development of twentieth century physics.

At one time it really felt like forever might happen for us.

Unfortunately, on May 2, 2011, we killed bin Laden, but we didn't kill his message. His message lives.

Our fingernails match our toenails, match our lipstick match our rouge...The habit of applying warpaint outlasts the battle.

The best thing about Sci-Fi, which is my favorite genre, is that there are no rules for behavior. So you can do anything you want.

I am always cautious.

there are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is, to tell them what they don't understand; and the other is, to tell them what they're used to.

It is as hard to get a man to stay at home after you've married him as it was to get him to go home before you married him.

Men are so accustomed to maintaining external order by violence that they cannot conceive of life being possible without violence.

This [health care reform] cannot pass. What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass.

The best religion the world has ever known is the religion of the Bible. It builds up all that is good.