My children have often asked me why I never received a Nobel Prize. I used to tell them it was because the Nobel committee couldn’t make up its mind which of my projects to recognize.

Theorists write all the popular books on science: Heinz Pagels, Frank Wilczek, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, et al. And why not? They have all that spare time.

Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money.

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

I sometimes think about the tower at Pisa as the first particle accelerator, a (nearly) vertical linear accelerator that Galileo used in his studies.

Those who do not stop asking silly questions become scientists.

We hope to explain the entire universe in a single, simple formula that you can wear on your T-shirt.

Science should have no less lofty a goal. My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt.

I'm so old I can remember when the Dead Sea was only sick.

One of the major ingredients for professional success in science is luck. Without this, forget it.

Neutrinos ... win the minimalist contest: zero charge, zero radius, and very possibly zero mass.

A stumble may prevent a fall.

A mother is always a mother, since a mother is a biological fact, whilst a father is a movable feast.

If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.

In my experience of doing physical scenes, half of your energy is spent on trying to get the other actor to enter into it physically with you. Most actors don't want to hurt each other.

You have to be able to swim in backlash.

As you get older, it's harder to maintain your weight and to fly through the air for those routines. It's also the lifestyle; you train seven to eight hours a day, five to six days a week.

One of the things I'm going to say out there is how grateful I am - and how grateful the world is - for the tremendous gift of the black people, of jazz.

En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.

If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.