I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.

But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

I loved doing problems in school.

I do it because I still get a kick out of it. I still love performing. It keeps me young.

Brand a man as a thief and no one will ever hire him for honest labor - he will be a hardened robber within weeks. The brand does not reveal a person's nature, it shapes it.

There isn't much I find interesting to write about in middle-class life.

Likewise nanotechnology will, once it gets under way, depend on the tools we have then and our ability to use them, and not on the steps that got us there.

A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.

Grace,” I said, very softly. “Say something.” Sam,” she said, and I crushed her to me.

I had a handful of records, but when I was 11 years old, I liked Puccini as much as Little Richard. They both made sense to me.

We believe that economics does not necessarily have to be a zero-sum game; it can be a win-win proposition for everyone involved so long as they have the tools in which to succeed.

It occurred to me when I was thirteen and wearing white gloves and Mary Janes and going to dancing school, that no one should have to dance backward all their lives.