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.

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.

[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.

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.

Know it from root to fruit

The thing that impresses me most about North America is the way parents obey their children.

I am not a pretty girl. I don't want to be a pretty girl. No, I want to be more than a pretty girl.

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.

I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.

Johnny can get down and Johnny can throw up, but Johnny can't read.

What heart can think, or tongue express, The harm that groweth of idleness?

Until Americans feel that their core asset - their homes - are stabilized, they are not going to have the animal spirits and they will continue to have less buying power.

A nation that sends its women to fight its wars is not worth defending.