Physics is not the most important thing. Love is.

Physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation.

So, ultimately, in order to understand nature it may be necessary to have a deeper understanding of mathematical relationships. But the real reason is that the subject is enjoyable, and although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentaliz ation is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them.

From a long view of the history of mankind the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.

I don't have to be good because they think I'm going to be good.

We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.

I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. [...] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.