A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!

The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination, in a tight straightjacket.

The work I have done has, already, been adequately rewarded and recognized. Imagination reaches out repeatedly trying to achieve some higher level of understanding, until suddenly I find myself momentarily alone before one new corner of nature's pattern of beauty and true majesty revealed. That was my reward.

Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?"

The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. ... If you will simply admit that maybe Nature does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possible avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

The Quantum Universe has a quotation from me in every chapter - but it's a damn good book anyway.

As you know, a theory in physics is not useful unless it is able to predict underlined effects which we would otherwise expect.