Does Michael Jackson or Archie Bunker or the president of General Moto — Frank Wilczek

"[S]ome scientists focus on ideal beauty, others on empirical truth. My own approach, following a great tradition going back to Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, has been to use beauty as a guide to truth."

"Exoplanet astronomy will systematically survey our galaxy, gathering information on the masses, orbits, geology, and atmospheres of millions of planets. As a byproduct, we will learn how rare life is and what conditions it requires. What we discover might support tests and refinements of anthropic reasoning."

"So let us listen to the light—what music do we hear? For one thing, we can elicit from each chemical element its own, unique chord. You may sometimes have noticed that a bright yellow flash is produced if ordinary table salt is sprinkled on a flame...a first bare hint of the subject of flame spectra... The fact that different elements emit light with different color characteristics is exploited by the makers of fireworks."

"How do we get from symmetric laws to asymmetric appearances? (arrow of time problem) ... Why are the fundamental laws symmetric? ("naturality" problem) ..."

"To me, dark matter is matter. It looks like matter, it quacks like matter, it waddles like matter. It has many, many properties that indicate its matter. And I think I know what matter it is!"

"The answer to the ancient question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" would then be that ‘nothing’ is unstable."