My advice is to go for the messes - that's where the action is.

It is positively spooky how the physicist finds the mathematician has been there before him or her.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

A theorist today is hardly considered respectable if he or she has not introduced at least one new particle for which there is no experimental evidence.

I have a friend — or had a friend, now dead — Abdus Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me that he had a terrible time because, although they were very receptive to technology, they felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief, and they were worried about it… and damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive of religious belief, and it’s a good thing too.

[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.

This doesn't mean that they commit themselves to the view that this is all there is. Many scientists (including me) think that this is the case, but other scientists are religious, and believe that what is observed in nature is at least in part a result of God's will.