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I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.
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My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.
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One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease.
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There may have been many big bangs, one of which created our universe. The other bangs created other universes.
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I may be a Jewish scientist, but I would be tickled silly if one day I were reincarnated as a Baptist preacher.
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We know that if supersymmetric particles exist, they must be very heavy; otherwise we would have spotted them by now.
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The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.
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Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.
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As scientists, we track down all promising leads, and there's reason to suspect that our universe may be one of many - a single bubble in a huge bubble bath of other universes.
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I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence.
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Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it.
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I think the appropriate response for a physicist is: 'I do not find the concept of God very interesting, because I cannot test it.'
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When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives.