I tried to contribute to the defeat of the Soviets. If I contributed 1%, it is 1% of something enormous.

There's no system foolproof enough to defeat a sufficiently great fool.

[Chemistry] laboratory work was my first challenge. ... I still carry the scars of my first discovery-that test-tubes are fragile.

In our educational institutions applied science may almost be described as a "no-man's land."

Really exotic methods of propulsion . . . will have to be devised to get there. How it will be done, I do not know. Whether it will be done, I am not quite certain. But I would bet it can be done.

In the theater you create a moment, but in that moment, there is a touch, a twinkle of eternity. And not just eternity, but community. . . . That connection is a sense of life for me.

Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.