I chop and change between what is called 'work' and what is called 'recreation.' There are no discontinuities in my day. I only play tennis with people I find interesting.

Quantum computation is a distinctively new way of harnessing nature. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.

Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...

Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.

Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in the universe.

The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

No precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. We need a stance of problem-fixing, not just problem-avoidance.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

Humans may or may not have cosmic significance, and if they do, it will be by hitching a ride on the objective centrality of knowledge in the cosmic scheme of things.

Well, I've always wanted to call my son

Heaven is a place where you cannot change and nothing can ever happen, so the things you love are always eternal. Hell is exactly the same.

I have come to realize that all my trouble with living has come from fear and smallness within me.

Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.

I feel so lucky to have done so many things that I love in the past few years so I'm just going to keep trying to do them.

I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em.

Great anger and violence can never build a nation.

Having read the inscriptions upon the tombstones of the great and little cemeteries, Wang Peng advised the Emperor to kill all the living and resurrect the dead.

If you were not born in this world, there would be no need to die. To be born in this world is to die, to disappear [laughing].

God showed me that He could and would replace everything that was missing in my life, but that nothing could replace Him in my life.