The average student emerges at the end of the Ph.D. program, already middle-aged, overspecialized, poorly prepared for the world outside, and almost unemployable except in a narrow area of specialization. Large numbers of students for whom the program is inappropriate are trapped in it, because the Ph.D. has become a union card required for entry into the scientific job market.

It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories.

All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control. Describing John von Neumann's aspiration for the application of computers sufficiently large to solve the problems of meteorology, despite the sensitivity of the weather to small perturbations.

...the computer models are very good at solving equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly.

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple.

If women are doing a Ph.D., they have a conflict between raising a family or finishing the degree, which is just at the worst time - between the ages of 25 to 30 or whatever it is. It ruins the five years of their lives.