I am growing old, and my future, so to speak, is already behind me.

The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.

There's life all over this universe, but the only life in the solar system is on earth, and in the whole universe we are the only men.

It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

I never could read science fiction. I was just uninterested in it. And you know, I don't like to read novels where the hero just goes beyond what I think could exist. And it doesn't interest me because I'm not learning anything about something I'll actually have to deal with.

Fighting in the air is not a sport. It is scientific murder.

The most extraordinary thing about trying to piece together the missing links in the evolutionary story is that when you do find a missing link and put it in the story, you suddenly need all these other missing links to connect to the new discovery. The gaps and questions actually increase - it's extraordinary.