The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?
Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' — which is just another way of saying that you can't.