“If we couldn’t laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.”

The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.

There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are clearly absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.

If an idea does not appear bizarre, there is no hope for it.

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.

One must always do what one really cannot.

There is no hope for any speculation that does not look absurd at first glance.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.

Physics is the belief that a simple and consistent description of nature is possible.

Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.

Trust me when I say you will come out changed and stronger on the other end of this.

You are asking yourself, as all of us must: ‘Who am I?’ . . . ‘Where am I?’ . . . ‘Whence do I go?’ The process of enlightenment is usually slow. But, in the end, our seeking always brings a finding. These great mysteries are, after all, enshrined in complete simplicity.

When something that can never quite be reenacted comes to an end (and all moments are that way),

If we are truly each other’s keepers, let’s support school lunches, food stamps, neighborhood garden projects, and so many other wonderful programs working to put an end to this cruel and needless blight once and for all.

A lot of ideas took us to dead ends or we found the tone wasn’t just right. I think we discovered very quickly this wasn’t just a song to end The Battle of the Five Armies – it was a song to say goodbye to Middle-earth.

Clearly outside of any war that has taken an ongoing story that has taken several weeks at a time. It’s anyone’s guess as to when it ends, if it ever does. And I think all of that is remarkable. No one predicted it.

At the end of the day you go out and do your job and follow your directions.

I don’t think I’ve ever died on stage. I’ve had jokes that died on stage. I’ve told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn’t know it was the end of the joke.