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.

We hope to explain the entire universe in a single, simple formula that you can wear on your T-shirt.

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that philosophy went downhill after Democritus and did not recover until the Renaissance.

One of the major ingredients for professional success in science is luck. Without this, forget it.

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.

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

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'.