The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.

Work hard to find something that fascinates you.

If all of mathematics disappeared, physics would be set back by exactly one week.

Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.

But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.

I learned a lot of different things from different schools. MIT is a very good place…. It has developed for itself a spirit, so that every member of the whole place thinks that it’s the most wonderful place in the world—it’s the center, somehow, of scientific and technological development in the United States, if not the world … and while you don’t get a good sense of proportion there, you do get an excellent sense of being with it and in it, and having motivation and desire to keep on

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.