It takes a very strong head to keep secrets for years and not go slightly mad. It isn't wise to be advised by anyone slightly mad.

No scientist or student of science, need ever read an original work of the past. As a general rule, he does not think of doing so. Rutherford was one of the greatest experimental physicists, but no nuclear scientist today would study his researches of fifty years ago. Their substance has all been infused into the common agreement, the textbooks, the contemporary papers, the living present.

Most of the scientists I have known well have felt - just as deeply as the non-scientists I have known well - that the individual condition of each is tragic. Each of us is alone: sometimes we escape from solitariness, through love or affection or perhaps creative moments, but those triumphs of life are pools of light we make for ourselves while the edge of the road is black: each of us dies alone.

I think, on the whole that scientists make slightly better husbands and fathers than most of us, and I admire them for it.

Civilization is hideously fragile... there's not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish.

Advertising degrades the people it appeals to; it deprives them of their will to choose.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.