If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."

We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.

Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole.