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

The helium which we handle must have been put together at some time and some place. We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place.

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

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own.

There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.

Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.