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.

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

From a long view of the history of mankind, seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.

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

It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.

Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion

But logic is not all, one needs one's heart to follow an idea.