One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

In the history of science it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right.

No matter how far we go into the future, there will always be new things happening, new information coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of life, consciousness, and memory.

I just enjoy calculating, and it's an instrument I know how to play. It's almost an athletic performance, in a way. I was just watching the Olympics, and that's how I feel when proving a theorem.

If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.

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.

Theory said one thing and the experiment said something different, so that was the stimulus that started me going, that there was something there to be explained, which wasn't understood and to try to see why that experiment gave the answer it did, so it was a big opportunity for a young student starting to have actually an experiment which contradicted the theory, so that's was my chance to understand that.