I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes.

There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change.

There is a difference between knowing what is true and knowing why it is true

We know a lot of things, but what we don't know is a lot more.

I have a tendency, more than most other physicists, to try to figure out everything all at once, before I publish. And even to try to figure out everything in my head, without pencil and paper.

Im actually, for the most part, a complete agnostic politically.

So when you ask me how string theory might be tested, I can tell you what's likely to happen at accelerators or some parts of the theory that are likely to be tested.

I have a much easier time imagining how we would understand the big bang, even though we can't do it yet, than I can imagine understanding consciousness.

As of now, string theorists have no explanation of why there are three large dimensions as well as time, and the other dimensions are microscopic. Proposals about that have been all over the map.

One very important aspect of string theory is definitely testable. That was the prediction of supersymmetry, which emerged from string theory in the early '70s.

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

He wasn't an alchemist, or a hero. He was a librarian, and a dreamer. He was a reader, and the unsung expert on a long-lost city no one cared a thing about.

If you put forth a small amount of effort, you just might find your next best friend for life is of a different race than your own.

I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness.” - Jem Carstairs

The Scots will do anything to beat the English or just to see them lose, but I've never bought into that really.

You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there.

The pyjamas have cats on them. I am informed that these cats belong to an organisation called Hello Kitty.

We are masters because we have the power to create and to rule our own lives.

The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.

I haven't much time to be fond of anything. But when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times the roses get it.