Frank Wilczek

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

I have been at it ten years. I collect them so that they will not be lost to America. We have no Egyptian mummies here, nor any relics of the Battle of Waterloo nor any curios from Pompeii. It is strictly American.

I’ve sworn never to read any reviews ever again except those that are pointed out to me as nice ones. I would say that most of us who are considered in the artist realm just take it so terribly, and, you know, it can kill ya!

You are only as happy as your saddest child.

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong– or absolutely right.

I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.

Idleness is the reason for many of our troubles.

Many unkind people have done kind things. Doing acts of kindness is not the same as occupying kindness, of being kindness.

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation – it is the one unbreakable diamond.

I attribute whatever I may have been able to accomplish in life far more to my wife than to anything else and to everything else put together. But I cannot flatter myself that I found her because I was a ‘good picker’, I believe profoundly that we are guided, led, in such momentous matters.

We do not know who we are until we see what we can do.