The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

People who travel in China tell me that the mood there is still very upbeat, because their media is different from our media. Chinese media emphasize how well things are going and suppress the bad news and publish the good news.

The language that nature speaks is the same language that we invented for mathematics. That's just an amazing piece of luck, which we don't understand.

Most of the papers which are submitted to the Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published.

[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.

A model is done when nothing else can be taken out.

The biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be the discovery of extraterrestrial life. We have been searching for it for 50 years and found nothing. That proves life is rarer than we hoped, but does not prove that the universe is lifeless. We are only now developing the tools to make our searches efficient and far-reaching, as optical and radio detection and data processing move forward.