A pragmatist is concerned with results, not reality.

I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita... "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

[About the great synthesis of atomic physics in the 1920s:] It was a heroic time. It was not the doing of any one man; it involved the collaboration of scores of scientists from many different lands. But from the first to last the deeply creative, subtle and critical spirit of Niels Bohr guided, restrained, deepened and finally transmuted the enterprise.

When you see something that is technically sweet you go ahead and do it.

Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search.

In a free world, if it is to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives if need be, but surely by our lives, the opportunity for a man to learn anything

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