The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

"It worked." (said after witnessing the first atomic detonation).

I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany.

I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.

I saw what the Depression was doing to my students. Often they could get no jobs, or jobs which were wholly inadequate. And through them, I began to understand how deeply political and economic events could affect men's lives. I began to feel the need to participate more fully in the life of the community.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.

In the spring of 1936, I was introduced by friends to Jean Tatlock. In the autumn, I began to court her. We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful: they are found because it was possible to find them.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

My mother was born in Baltimore, and before her marriage, she was an artist and teacher of art.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

To recruit staff, I traveled all over the country talking with people who had been working on one or another aspect of the atomic-energy enterprise and people in radar work, for example, and underwater sound, telling them about the job, the place that we are going to, and enlisting their enthusiasm.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance the wise grows it under his feet.

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity no humor no overstatement can quite extinguish the physicists have known sin and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

The powerful notion of entropy which comes from a very special branch of physics is certainly useful in the study of communication and quite helpful when applied in the theory of language.

It's dangerous to buy into praise and criticism for what you do when you're trying to present your music to people. I don't ignore it completely, but I don't dwell on it too much.

If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

I go with the flow. Whatever music you play for me, I'll dance.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

There are quite enough sheep already - be a shepherd: be somebody who's bold and who leads.

Vanity is but the surface.

I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.

America does not always need to be the world's bodyguard.

Wherever you live on this earth, and whatever your life's situation may be, I testify to you that the gospel of Jesus Christ has the divine power to lift you to great heights from what appears at times to be an unbearable burden or weakness.

I hope that the mistakes made and suffering imposed upon Japanese Americans nearly 60 years ago will not be repeated against Arab Americans whose loyalties are now being called into question.

I believe it is called 'Area 51' because of a project, the very first project that went on out there, in 1951.

So much has been written about me, and people don't know what's right and what's wrong. I'd rather let them stay confused.

I'll be very clear about this: I'm not a fan of getting rid of Dodd-Frank.

As an artist, it feels good that we've created something that is connecting with the audience, which is what we always strive to do.

I'm not one of these people who want to tear down our heroes and that kind of thing.

As most people know, I am a vampire, so I have no reflection. Every day, I paste a picture of someone else on the mirror.

Arizona's vale of mountain-temples.

You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.