The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.

The uncertainty relation does not refer to the past; if the velocity of the electron is at first known and the position then exactly measured, the position for times previous to the measurement may be calculated.

If the lecture is good, then everything is too smooth. That's the same in music: if the performance is too good, you really don't enjoy it, because it just goes by, and you can never penetrate into the heart of it. Sometimes a poor performance is better for enjoyment, because you can look at those things that were wrong and analyze them.

This proving of such and such I found to be almost like cheating. You start somewhere, and then you go into a dark tunnel, and then you come out at another place. You find that you have proved what you wanted to prove, but in the tunnel, you don't see anything.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.

After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.

I have so many favourite science fiction films. I would say 'Alien' and 'Aliens' are two of my favourite sci-fi films. Also 'Children of Men' would be one of my favourite science fiction films. I love the original 'Solaris' and the remake. And even though it wasn't a film, the series 'Battlestar Galactica' was one of my favourite TV shows.

If you patent a discovery which is unique, say a human gene or even just one particular function of a human gene, then you are actually creating a monopoly, and that's not the purpose of the world of patents.