“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

“I can testify that when I was a student studying QM not a single professor so much as mentioned the enigmatic nature of the theory, the mysteries surrounding its interpretation or the great debates that had so animated Bohr and Einstein. The same is true of every textbook I ever read. Indeed it was not until 1985 that a single graduate-level textbook so much as mentioned Bell’s Theorem- more than two decades after he had discovered it. Undergraduate texts took even longer to get around to the subject. And if our professors and our textbooks did not refer to the subject, and consequently we the students did not either. The subject was out of bounds.”

“We don’t teach our students enough of the intellectual content of experiments- their novelty and their capacity for opening new fields...My own view is that you take these things personally. You do an experiment because your own philosophy makes you want to know the result. It’s too hard, and life is too short to spend your time doing something because someone else said it was important. You must feel the thing yourself.”

“Only after beginning my more recent research- which focuses on the details of astronomical systems more than my earlier particle physics work- did I truly appreciate the beauty and coherence of the Universe’s dynamical systems. Galaxies are formed, stars get created, and the heavy elements created by those stars and the gas they eject contribute to further star formation. Despite its appearance on human time scales, the Universe and everything inside it is far from static. Not only do stars evolve, but galaxies do as well.”

“For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory...we must turn to those kinds of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like the Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of experience.”

“The universe does not exist ‘out there’, independent of us. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense, is a participatory universe.”

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

“In science there are two types of geniuses: the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘magicians’. While
Bethe and Dyson were truly brilliant at calculations, they took clear, straightforward
steps. Feynman in contrast, was no ‘ordinary genius’ but rather, in his seeming ability to
pull results out of thin air, ‘a magician of the highest caliber’.”

“The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory.”

“If computers that you build are quantum, then spies everywhere will all want them. Our codes will all fail, and they’ll read our email, until we get crypto that’s quantum, and duant them. ”

“As a rule, people differentiate between matter, space, and time. Matter is what exists in space and endures through time. But this does not tell us what space is… It is matter which we see, touch, hear, which causes sensations to arise within us.”

“Regardless of your attitude toward Big Bang cosmology, which very successfully describes the Universe’s evolution only a fraction of a second after the Universe we know began, no one knows what happened at the earliest moment. A reliable characterization of the Big Bang- and possibly what happened before- requires a theory of quantum gravity. On the tiny distance scales that are relevant to this earliest time, both Quantum Mechanics and gravity are important. We will gain insight into the very beginning of the Universe only when we know more about physical processes on this tiny distance scale. And even then observations to validate the conclusions will be very likely impossible.”

“Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.”

“Consciousness may be associated with all quantum mechanical processes...Since everything that occurs is ultimately the result of one or more quantum mechanical events, the universe is ‘inhabited’ by an almost unlimited number of rather discrete conscious, usually non thinking entities that are responsible for the detailed workings of the universe.”

“Science promised manpower, but as so often happens when people are seduced by promises of power, the price is servitude and impotence. Power is nothing if it is not the power to choose.”

“Any path is only a path, and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you...Look at very path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

“The general notions about human understanding...which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture, they have a history, and in Buddhist or Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.”

“Feynman had a completely new way of looking at things- which I knew but most of
the other people found strange. And especially Niels Bohr, who after all, was the leader
of us all. Niels Bohr couldn’t understand it, wouldn’t believe it, gave some very sharp
arguments against it, and treated Feynman rather badly. And Feynman of course, was
very much disappointed because he had what he considered a beautiful theory. And
here was the greatest of all quantum physicists, who wouldn’t believe him. So when he
came home I had to console him. I was at the meeting; I heard the presentations, as well
as Bohr’s reaction. Unfortunately, Feynman likes to present his work- or did, at that time, like to present it- as paradoxically as possible. And this was just impossible for somebody like Bohr to understand.”

“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanisms of a closed watch. He sees the face of the moving hand, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all of the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.”

“From photon to detectors to technician to supervisor we could continue until we include the entire universe. Who is looking at the universe, how is the universe being actualized...the answer comes full circle. We are actualizing the universe. Since we are a part of the universe, that makes the universe and us self-actualizing entities.”