To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.

But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.

The most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.

I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace.

There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality.

I can't think that it would be terrible of me to say - and it is occasionally true - that I need physics more than friends.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.