The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects.

He [Democritus] is probably best known for two of the most scientifically intuitive quotes ever uttered by an ancient: 'Nothing exists except atoms and space, everything else is opinion'.

One of the major ingredients for professional success in science is luck. Without this, forget it.

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

The aether: Invented by Isaac Newton, reinvented by James Clerk Maxwell. This is the stuff that fills up the empty space of the universe. Discredited and discarded by Einstein, the aether is now making a Nixonian comeback. It's really the vacuum, but burdened by theoretical, ghostly particles.

The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away.

Democritus's work on the void was revolutionary.

Science is not about status quo. It's about revolution.

By the grace of AEC, BNL, God, Green and Hayworth (alphabetical order), we should see neutrinos.

Theorists tend to peak at an early age the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen-or so it seems. They need to know just enough when they're young they haven't accumulated the intellectual baggage.

My children have often asked me why I never received a Nobel Prize. I used to tell them it was because the Nobel committee couldn’t make up its mind which of my projects to recognize.

Those who do not stop asking silly questions become scientists.

I sometimes think about the tower at Pisa as the first particle accelerator, a (nearly) vertical linear accelerator that Galileo used in his studies.

I'm so old I can remember when the Dead Sea was only sick.

During an intense period of lab work, the outside world vanishes and the obsession is total. Sleep is when you can curl up on the accelerator floor for an hour.

Where do we stand today compared to Greece circa 400 B.C.? Today's experiment-driven 'standard model' is not all that dissimilar to Democritus's speculative [sic] atomic theory.