I'm so old I can remember when the Dead Sea was only sick.

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

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.

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

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.

I started out as a molecules kid. In high school and early college I loved chemistry, but I gradually shifted toward physics, which seemed cleaner - odorless, in fact.

The real goal of physics is to come up with an equation that could explain the universe but still be small enough to fit on a T-shirt