Science itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way ... Only the graduate student, poor beast of burden that he is, can be expected to know a little of each. As the number of physicists increases, each specialty becomes more self-sustaining and self-contained. Such Balkanization carries physics, and indeed, every science further away, from natural philosophy, which, intellectually, is the meaning and goal of science.

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?

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

There isn't a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined organization.

Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, 'Will it bring you nearer to God?'

We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids ?

Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way into you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds.