I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

I believe you’ve got to do your due diligence.

ESPN is a great organization to work for.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world – but it doesn’t happen twice.

Why should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?

Study men, not historians.

I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.

Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

The quality of research in the U.S. is absolutely the best.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

One element of Madonna’s career that really takes center stage is how many times she’s reinvented herself. It’s easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It’s inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable.

I loved what I did. I could’ve been secretary of state for ever.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.

My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I worked my heart out to get my degrees. But the minute I graduated, suddenly everyone was asking me, ‚Well, when are you going to get married and start having kids?‘ And the truth is I had no idea how I would balance the expected role of wife and mother with a challenging career.

No one undertakes research in physics with the intention of winning a prize. It is the joy of discovering something no one knew before.

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

I guess you could say it’s always been my destiny to be a performer.

Becoming a writer is not a ‚career decision‘ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

I’ve been a mogul and executive since the beginning of my career. People are just born with that skill.

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

Research is creating new knowledge.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

I just don’t believe in the basic concept that someone should make their whole career in public service.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

I’m a working-class person, working with class.

In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.

Never get married in college; it’s hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you’ve already made one mistake.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.

You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

I’m not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.