Outside of their particular area of expertise scientists are just as dumb as the next person.

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt.

A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.

There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation.

It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about we can discuss.

There is one simplification at least. Electrons behave ... in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly in the same way.