My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. Izzy, she would say, did you ask a good question today? That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist.

It was eerie. I saw myself in that machine. I never thought my work would come to this.

My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin-the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man. ... Where are the life-size-or even pint-size-Benjamin Franklins of today?

Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious.

[Science is] a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe itself.

There are questions which illuminate, and there are those that destroy. I was always taught to ask the first kind.

If you decide you don't have to get A's, you can learn an enormous amount in college.