It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward it.

A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.]

It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)... despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

Idealism is the highest form of reason.