When I talk about the pain and hardship of a scientist's life, I'm speaking of more than existential angst. Galileo's work was condemned by the Church; Madame Curie paid with her life, a victim of leukemia wrought by radiation poisoning. Too many of us develop cataracts. None of us gets enough sleep. Most of what we know about the universe we know thanks to a lot of guys (and ladies) who stayed up late at night.

Those who do not stop asking silly questions become scientists.

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.

The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects.

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.

He [Democritus] is probably best known for two of the most scientifically intuitive quotes ever uttered by an ancient: 'Nothing exists except atoms and space, everything else is opinion'.

Democritus's work on the void was revolutionary.