I mean science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly.

Some things go better than you expected, other things go worse, so I'm... I think the only sensible thing is just to wait and see and what I'm doing when I'm writing books - I'm not doing science so much anymore.

The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes.

[On Richard P. Feynman's live demonstration of the rigidity of the O-rings when cold that doomed the space shuttle Challenger, killing seven astronauts:] The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks her a clear question.

Lucky individuals in each generation find technology appropriate to their needs.

I mean science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly.

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.