I don't like honors. I'm appreciated for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I notice that other physicists use my work. I don't need anything else. I don't think there's any sense to anything else.... I've already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don't believe in honors... I can't stand it, it hurts me.

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.

The present situation in physics is as if we know chess, but we don't know one or two rules.

An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!

The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.

What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them?

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.