The brain rewards us for interacting with beautiful things. In this way, evolution wants to encourage us to do what is good for us.

The brain rewards us for interacting with beautiful things. In this way, evolution wants to encourage us to do what is good for us.

An ordinary mistake is one that leads to a dead end, while a profound mistake is one that leads to progress. Anyone can make an ordinary mistake, but it takes a genius to make a profound mistake.

When religion talks about our aspirations and our sense of morality, I do not believe that science can contradict it. However, when religion contradicts science on matters of fact, religion must yield.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Many of my heroes, like Galileo, Maxwell, Newton and, less explicitly, Einstein thought what they were doing was finding out what God is. All of them had this inspiration that if you want to find out what God is, you have to look at his work.

If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake.