An electron is no more (and no less) hypothetical than a star. Nowadays we count electrons one by one in a Geiger counter, as we count the stars one by one on a photographic plate.

Man is slightly nearer to the atom than to the star. ... From his central position man can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist. ... [K]nowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. The chance of their doing so is decidedly more favourable than the chance of the molecules returning to one half of the vessel.

Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.

So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.

Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.