“The creation of Physics is the shared heritage of all mankind. East and West, North and South have equally participated in it.”

Personally I would like to see that the nuclear age, in terms of power, does come, because there’s no long-term future for developing countries without nuclear power.

People either buy nuclear power, nuclear reactors from outside, and don’t train their own men, or they just don’t go into nuclear power at all, they are so afraid of it.

Before Chernobyl or without Chernobyl the nuclear power was the safe thing.

This sense of wonder leads most scientists to a Superior Being – der Alte, the Old One, as Einstein affectionately called the Deity – a Superior Intelligence, the Lord of all Creation and Natural Law.

Alfred Nobel stipulated that no distinction of race or colour will determine who received of his generosity.

I am a particle physicist, which is the nearest branch to nuclear physics. So in that sense I was the sort of right connection with the subject of nuclear energy and so on.

The Chernobyl technology is different from the technology which is used in the west, mainly.

I’m afraid there’s a big confusion in the world between nuclear power and nuclear arms.

In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.

From time immemorial, man has desired to comprehend the complexity of nature in terms of as few elementary concepts as possible.

Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind.

Mankind spends much more on training pilots of aircraft than it does to train the nuclear reactor operators.

Politicians – well, first of all, they should get rid of nuclear weapons, I think.

Soon I knew the craft of experimental physics was beyond me – it was the sublime quality of patience – patience in accumulating data, patience with recalcitrant equipment – which I sadly lacked.

I meet people and a lot of times, instead of saying, “Are you from the East Coast?” people just go, “you’re from the East Coast, right?”, having no reason to have known that. I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s just that I’m Jewish.

Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?

It is difficult for anyone to tell you what is going to happen. [Middle East] is an area where everything is on the brink of explosion.

Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East. That is why we are in contact with most of the problems forever, let us say, whether directly or indirectly.

As a state, as a government, in 2001 we proposed to the United Nations to empty or to get rid of every WMD in the Middle East, and the United States stood against that proposal. This is our conviction and policy.

You should expect everything. Not necessarily through the government, the governments are not the only player in [Middle East] region.

Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.

You have different parties, different factions, you have different ideologies ; you have everything in Middle East region now.