No matter how beautiful the theory, one irritating fact can dismiss the entire formulism, so it has to be proven.

In the 1950s, we had all these B-grade science-fiction movies. The point was to scare the public and get them to buy popcorn. No attempt was made to create movies that were somewhat inherent to the truth.

A hundred years ago, Auguste Compte, ... a great philosopher, said that humans will never be able to visit the stars, that we will never know what stars are made out of, that that's the one thing that science will never ever understand, because they're so far away. And then, just a few years later, scientists took starlight, ran it through a prism, looked at the rainbow coming from the starlight, and said: "Hydrogen!" Just a few years after this very rational, very reasonable, very scientific prediction was made, that we'll never know what stars are made of.

A related aspect of intelligent consciousness is delay of gratification: the wisdom to accurately predict whether delay rather than acting on impulse will yield greater benefit.

I am a figure skater, which helps me appreciate Newton's theory of mechanics.

To become a theoretical physicist ... you need to have a passionate love affair with the universe.

In fact, all of us have a piece of Chernobyl in our bodies going back to 1986.