I think that intellectuals who end up in hell will have to read page proofs and check indexes there.

Knowing he [Bob Serber] was going to the [first atom bomb] test, I asked him how he planned to deal with the danger of rattlesnakes. He said, 'I'll take along a bottle of whiskey.' … I ended by asking, 'What would you do about those possibilities [of what unknown phenomena might cause a nuclear explosion to propagate in the atmosphere]?' Bob replied, 'Take a second bottle of whiskey.'

There is a time for scientists and movie stars and those who have flown the atlantic to restrain their opinions lest they be taken more seriously than they should be.

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

Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

Physics without mathematics is meaningless.