We have these amazing gifts of music and mathematics and painting and Olympic running. I mean, we're the animal that is best of all the animals at long-distance running. Why? It is quite amazing. Superfluous gifts you don't really need to survive.

I don't know, but I think it's quite possible that the more science you teach kids in school the more it turns them off, so I don't know. I mean you never can tell which way it will go.

It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.

I'm happy that I've raised six kids, and not one of them is a Ph.D.

One of the memorable moments of my life was when Willard Libby came to Princeton with a little jar full of crystals of barium xenate. A stable compound, looking like common salt, but much heavier. This was the magic of chemistry, to see xenon trapped into a crystal.

We have these amazing gifts of music and mathematics and painting and Olympic running. I mean, we're the animal that is best of all the animals at long-distance running. Why? It is quite amazing. Superfluous gifts you don't really need to survive.

A model is such a fascinating toy that you fall in love with your creation.