For more than 200 years materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs.

If I want to understand the laws of physics I have to first believe what I read about physics. I have to have faith in what I read.

Physics is experience arranged in economical order.

As for the forces electromagnetism and gravity we experience in everyday life. But the weak and strong forces are beyond our ordinary experience. So in physics lots of the basic building blocks take 20th- or perhaps 21st-century equipment to explore.

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.

Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works yet they know how to drive a car. You don't have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. You don't have to understand any of this stuff to use Macintosh.

I like physics. I think it is the best science out of all three of them because generally it's more useful. You learn about speed and velocity and time and that's all clever stuff.

That attitude does not exist so much today but in those days there was a very sharp distinction between basic physics and applied physics. Columbia did not deal with applied physics.

You watch an old 'Jeopardy!' and the categories alone are very plain. 'Poetry ' or 'Movies ' or 'Physics.' If you watch it now though there'll be a theme board where the categories are all Hitchcock movies. Lots more jokes lots more high-concept categories and questions.

We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics and into the age of biology.