For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Once I get on a puzzle, I can't get off.

I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew.

Because the theory of quantum mechanics could explain all of chemistry and the various properties of substances, it was a tremendous success. But still there was the problem of the interaction of light and matter.

I thought one should have the attitude of 'What do you care what other people think!'

People often think I'm a faker, but I'm usually honest, in a certain way - in such a way that often nobody believes me!

It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself.

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.

The universe is very large, and its boundaries are not known very well, but it is still possible to define some kind of a radius to be associated with it.

Gravitation is, so far, not understandable in terms of other phenomena.

Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone - both to the novice and to the experienced physicist.

The extreme weakness of quantum gravitational effects now poses some philosophical problems; maybe nature is trying to tell us something new here: maybe we should not try to quantize gravity.

I got a signed document from Bullock's saying that they had such-and-such drawings on consignment. Of course, nobody bought any of them, but otherwise, I was a big success: I had my drawings on sale at Bullock's!

I've always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, 'If it's a boy, he's going to be a scientist.'

In any decision for action, when you have to make up your mind what to do, there is always a 'should' involved, and this cannot be worked out from, 'If I do this, what will happen?' alone.

Often one postulates that a priori, all states are equally probable. This is not true in the world as we see it. This world is not correctly described by the physics which assumes this postulate.

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

We're always, by the way, in fundamental physics, always trying to investigate those things in which we don't understand the conclusions. After we've checked them enough, we're okay.

When I would hear the rabbi tell about some miracle such as a bush whose leaves were shaking but there wasn't any wind, I would try to fit the miracle into the real world and explain it in terms of natural phenomena.

Quarks came in a number of varieties - in fact, at first, only three were needed to explain all the hundreds of particles and the different kinds of quarks - they are called u-type, d-type, s-type.