Theorists tend to peak at an early age; the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen-or so it seems. They need to know just enough; when they're young they haven't accumulated the intellectual baggage.

Where do we stand today compared to Greece circa 400 B.C.? Today's experiment-driven 'standard model' is not all that dissimilar to Democritus's speculative [sic] atomic theory.

A theoretical physicist can spend his entire lifetime missing the intellectual challenge of experimental work, experiencing none of the thrills and dangers - the overhead crane with its ten-ton load, the flashing skull and crossbones and danger, radioactivity signs. A theorist's only real hazard is stabbing himself with a pencil while attacking a bug that crawls out of his calculations.

During an intense period of lab work, the outside world vanishes and the obsession is total. Sleep is when you can curl up on the accelerator floor for an hour.

My children have often asked me why I never received a Nobel Prize. I used to tell them it was because the Nobel committee couldn’t make up its mind which of my projects to recognize.

Science should have no less lofty a goal. My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt.

Theorists write all the popular books on science: Heinz Pagels, Frank Wilczek, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, et al. And why not? They have all that spare time.