Paradox is the sharpest scalpel in the satchel of science. Nothing concentrates the mind as effectively, regardless of whether it pits two competing theories against each other, or theory against observation, or a compelling mathematical deduction against ordinary common sense.

Numbers instill a feeling for the lie of the land, and furnish grist for the mathematical mill that is the physicist's principal tool.

The smell of subjectivity clings to the mechanical definition of complexity as stubbornly as it sticks to the definition of information.

In fact, an information theory that leaves out the issue of noise turns out to have no content.

Both induction and deduction, reasoning from the particular and the general, and back again from the universal to the specific, form the essence to scientific thinking.

The switch from 'steam engines' to 'heat engines' signals the transition from engineering practice to theoretical science.

This is not what I thought physics was about when I started out: I learned that the idea is to explain nature in terms of clearly understood mathematical laws; but perhaps comparisons are the best we can hope for.