If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there
Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm
Any living cell carries with it the experiences of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors. You cannot expect to explain so wise an old bird in a few simple words
Scientists often have a naive faith that if only they could discover enough facts about a problem, these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution
There are two kinds of people: the ones who believe in evolution, and the ones whose existence disproves it
All models are wrong but some are useful
Science, after all, is only an expression of our ignorance of our own ignorance
Do the best experiments you can, and always tell the truth. That’s all
To understand how all of this works we will need something more than merely lists of components… the great difference between the telephone directory and a Shakespeare play is that, while both have a grand cast of characters, only the play has a plot
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning
Every paper is just a progress report
One sometimes finds, what one is not looking for
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction
Scientists only need to be right some of the time — preferably about important things
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work
Science is, after all, the abstraction of simple principles from complex data
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Best part of academia is you get to be your own boss. The worst part is my boss is an idiot
We're not free in what we do because we are not free in what we want
I'm in between successes right now
There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone
Documentation is a love letter that you write to your future self
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it
We are drowning in data but thirsty for knowledge
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing
Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers
When the lightbulb was invented, no one complained it was too dim!
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away
There are two things academics hate: change, and the way things are
And all the science I don't understand, it's just my job 5 days a week
If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter
You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place
There is a big difference between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you are better than everyone else. Confidence is knowing you are the best version of yourself
Confidence is not a substitute for controls
If you want to answer the big questions, you have to get down into the trenches. You don’t have to stay there forever, and you shouldn’t. But you have to know how it’s actually done
Nature is the way that it is, regardless of how humans feel it should be
Never wrestle with a pig because you'll both get dirty and the pig likes it
