Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it.

The fact that I don't have any particular need for religion doesn't mean that I have a need to cast religion aside the way some of my colleagues do.

I believe we owe our young an education that captures the exhilarating drama of science.

Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.

A unified theory would put us at the doorstep of a vast universe of things that we could finally explore with precision.

In quantum mechanics there is A causing B. The equations do not stand outside that usual paradigm of physics. The real issue is that the kinds of things you predict in quantum mechanics are different from the kinds of things you predict using general relativity. Quantum mechanics, that big, new, spectacular remarkable idea is that you only predict probabilities, the likelihood of one outcome or another. That's the new idea.

String theory is the most developed theory with the capacity to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics in a consistent manner. I do believe the universe is consistent, and therefore I do believe that general relativity and quantum mechanics should be put together in a manner that makes sense.