Winning a Nobel Prize is no big deal, but winning it with an IQ of 124 is really something.

This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore.

To do any important work in physics a very good mathematical ability and aptitude are required. Some work in applications can be done without this, but it will not be very inspired. If you must satisfy your "personal curiosity concerning the mysteries of nature" what will happen if these mysteries turn out to be laws expressed in mathematical terms (as they do turn out to be)? You cannot understand the physical world in any deep or satisfying way without using mathematical reasoning with facility.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

In fact the total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another and he is all right.

'Conservation' (the conservation law) means this ... that there is a number, which you can calculate, at one moment-and as nature undergoes its multitude of changes, this number doesn't change. That is, if you calculate again, this quantity, it'll be the same as it was before. An example is the conservation of energy: there's a quantity that you can calculate according to a certain rule, and it comes out the same answer after, no matter what happens, happens.

In those days, in Far Rockaway, there was a youth center for Jewish kids at the temple.... Somebody nominated me for president of the youth center. The elders began getting nervous, because I was an avowed atheist by that time.... I thought nature itself was so interesting that I didn't want it distorted like that. And so I gradually came to disbelieve the whole religion.