Modern science is fast-moving, and no laboratory can exist for long with a program based on old facilities. Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.

While a lab Director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community.

In 1948 I entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undecided between studies of chemistry and physics, but my first year convinced me that physics was more interesting to me.

Modern science is fast-moving, and no laboratory can exist for long with a program based on old facilities. Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.

I was born on 22 March 1931 in New York, the elder child of Abraham and Fanny Richter.

Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases.

As accelerators reach higher and higher energies, we may need a new Standard Model, or, at least, today's may need to be modified, but that's the way science operates.

During my first year as a graduate student, we worked on a measurement of the isotope shift and hyperfine structure of mercury isotopes.

During my years at the synchrotron laboratory, I had become interested in the theory of quantum electrodynamics and had decided that what I would most like to do after completing my dissertation work was to probe the short-distance behavior of the electromagnetic interaction.

For nuclear power to have a future, we'll either need more Yucca Mountains or a way to decrease the stuff we put there.

I got no thrill from solving an integral equation, but I did get a thrill from building an exotic piece of equipment that worked.

I've become interested in the impact of climate change on the world and the future of energy needs for the developing world.

In 1960, I married Laurose Becker. We have two children: Elizabeth, born in 1961, and Matthew, born in 1963.

Iran wants to join the group of countries that want to know about the biggest things, like space.

Is the sky falling? No. It's maybe drooping a bit.

Politics is a lot tougher than physics.

So now, if we don't fund the physical sciences, where will the Next Big Thing come from?

The reason why Three Mile Island makes such a big impact is because of a Jane Fonda movie called 'The China Syndrome.'

The sun doesn't shine at night, and wind power is highly variable. To meet our emissions goals, we're going to have to grasp every arrow in the quiver, and nuclear is one of those arrows.

Theorists can create all sorts of theories which go beyond the Standard Model. But there's not one bit of experimental evidence to point out which way you should go.

Total failure isn't something I want to spend a lot of time envisioning. I'm pretty sure I'll recognize it if it comes.

What I found was that I thoroughly enjoyed the plumbing of experiment.

What lots of people have been trying to do ever since is find what's beyond the current Standard Model. So far, it has stood impervious to all attacks.

What struck me first on reading the Ten Hoeve-Jacobson paper was how small the consequences of the radiation release from the Fukushima reactor accident are projected to be compared to the devastation wrought by the giant earthquake and tsunami.

What we're really after is trying to understand what's in the mind of God.

While a lab director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community. I learned this early in my career while I was leading the construction of the SPEAR facility.

Starving the future to feed the present is a mistake. It leads to obsolescence and stagnation. Sometimes, it is hard to make this understood.

I think that somebody with the resources and innovation and the idea is going to come out of nowhere and come up with a successful space travel program.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.

There are 20 million unemployed and what does the Constitution offer us in the Europe of 25, 27 and soon to be 30: policies of unrestricted competition to the detriment of production, wages, research and innovation.

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

As the world's sole remaining super power and economic powerhouses, our nation's ability to be at the forefront of innovation and production has enabled unparalleled economic success of our nation's workforce.

Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we've had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you're really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.

Fight piracy; don't squash innovation.

An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work.

Human societies vary in lots of independent factors affecting their openness to innovation.

Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.

America demands invention and innovation to succeed.

We need a positive economic agenda that invests in the innovation and growth that will create jobs for middle class families and ensure that America remains the world leader.

The trick with computers I think, is to approach old and new things with the same reverence as you would like your favourite chair and not be seduced by the constant innovation otherwise you never do anything.

Any good music must be an innovation.

The place of exciting innovation - where the action is - that's Rhode Island!

In order for America to remain a global leader in innovation and opportunity, we must give our children a solid foundation in math and science.

You can't suppress creativity, you can't suppress innovation.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.

Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.

Measures of self-government and a school council, especially for such young children, were a great innovation.