Saul Perlmutter

As a scientist, you feel a sense of team spirit for your country but you also have a sense of team spirit for the international community.

Astronomers ought to be able to ask fundamental questions without accelerators. 

For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up, the Universe will end in ice. 

From our point of view, the most exciting thing would be if we discovered something really fundamental in our understanding was just off a bit - and that now we have a chance to revisit it. 

I was one of those kids who always thought that we should know how the world works around us. 

I will say that growing up as a kid in an urban environment and having lived in cities all my life, the one achievement that everyone can look forward to is getting the perfect parking spot. 

If you ask almost any of them, 'Do you stand behind your theory? Is this the answer?' I think almost everyone would say, 'No, no, no. I'm just trying to expand the range of possibilities.' We really don't know what's going on. 

If you're puzzled by what dark energy is, you're in good company.

It is a tough choice between ending up in the cold or ending up in a fiery blast.

It seemed like my favourite kind of job - a wonderful chance to ask something absolutely fundamental: the fate of the Universe and whether the Universe was infinite or not.

It's an unusual opportunity, a chance for so many people to share in the excitement and the fun of the fact that we may be on to hints as to what the Universe is made out of. I guess the whole point of a prize like this is to be able to get that out into the community.

It's interesting to wake up at 3 in the morning by someone saying they're a reporter and they want to know how you feel. I felt fine, but I said, 'Well, why do you ask?'

Nobody really expects a Nobel Prize call.

Probably the single most important thing about the Nobel Prize for most people is whether they get the coveted parking space on campus.

So it's possible that someday, by understanding a little bit more about how the world works, it will come back to help us in some other way that will be surprising.

The original project began because we know the universe is expanding. Everybody had assumed that gravity would slow down the expansion of the universe and everything would come to a halt and collapse. The big surprise was it was actually speeding up.

There are still so many questions to answer. When you look at any part of the universe, you have to feel humbled.

John B. S. Haldane

It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.

A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult. 

And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art. 

I have never yet met a healthy person who worried very much about his health, or a really good person who worried much about his own soul.  

I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear. 

I wish I had the voice of Homer to sing of rectal carcinoma. 

If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles. 

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern.

The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.

There can be no truce between science and religion.

John B. S. Haldane

It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.

A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult. 

And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art. 

I have never yet met a healthy person who worried very much about his health, or a really good person who worried much about his own soul. 

I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear. 

I wish I had the voice of Homer to sing of rectal carcinoma. 

If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles. 

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern.

The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.

There can be no truce between science and religion.

John Muir

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. 

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. 

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. 

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! 

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

One may as well dam for water tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

Alexander Hamilton

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing. 

A promise must never be broken. 

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous. 

Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things. 

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government. 

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives. 
I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by firesword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.

In the main it will be found that a power over a man's support (salary) is a power over his will. 

In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

William S. Burroughs

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. 

A functioning police state needs no police. 

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.  

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way. 

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. 

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.' 

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.

Lucille Ball

Ability is of little account without opportunity. 

How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we'd profit from them.  

I am a real ham. I love an audience. I work better with an audience. I am dead, in fact, without one. 

I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally. 

I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. 

I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent. 

I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can.

I will never do another TV series. It couldn't top I Love Lucy, and I'd be foolish to try. In this business, you have to know when to get off.

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.

I'm happy that I have brought laughter because I have been shown by many the value of it in so many lives, in so many ways.

I'm not funny. What I am is brave.If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do. 

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by. 

It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy. 

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. 

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn' t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A confession has to be part of your new life. 

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push. 

A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view. 

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.  

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring. 

A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.

A picture is a fact.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement. 

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it. 

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

Richard Burton

A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles. 

An actor is something less than a man, while an actress is something more than a woman. 

False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports. 

How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events of a man's life, religiously preserve the merest trifles. 

I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child. Our love is so furious that we burn each other out. 

I've done the most awful rubbish in order to have somewhere to go in the morning. 

If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.

Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know.

Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

The Welsh are all actors. It's only the bad ones who become professional.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others work.

Arthur Miller

A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back. 

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself. 

A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can't live that way you don't stay. 

A suicide kills two people, Maggie, that's what it's for!

All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen.

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.

Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume. 

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author. 

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value. 

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.

He wants to live on through something-and in his case, his masterpiece is his son. all of us want that, and it gets more poignant as we get more anonymous in this world.

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.