“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”

“Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.”

“I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.”

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

“All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.”

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

“Geometry was invented that we might expeditiously avoid, by drawing Lines, the Tediousness of Computation.”

“I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.”

“Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.”

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.”

“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

“See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.”