Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don’t have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don’t adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Words are loaded pistols.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

I’ve always been interested in science – one of my favourite books is James Watson’s ‚Molecular Biology of the Gene.‘

Knowledge is true opinion.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

The profoundly ‚atomic‘ character of the universe is visible in everyday experience, in raindrops and grains of sand, in the hosts of the living, and the multitude of stars; even in the ashes of the dead.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.

Stupidity and human incompetence are the great evils, not ambition and glory.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.