If you're not sure why you're doing something, you can never do enough of it. Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

...Intelligence and character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.

It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field into a single structure. Only so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close.

I think we have to safeguard ourselves against people who are a menace to others, quite apart from what may have motivated their deeds.

I know that the most joy in my life has come to me from my violin.

The physicist's greatest tool is his wastebasket.