Edward Witten

“String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe—from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting galaxies—are reflections of one grand physical principle, one master equation.”

“Even the bad ideas have a mathematical beauty.”

“String theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance.”

“M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of nature.”

“The world is not magic. It is a puzzle, and the puzzle is solvable.”

“Black holes are where God divided by zero.”

“What we thought of as empty space is a very complicated object.”

“It's a bit like archaeology. You're digging for the foundations of the universe.”

“It's great that we're making progress in our understanding of string theory, but it's not the same as saying we've made progress in our understanding of the real world.”

“The path to physics is not a straight line. It's a winding road, with many dead ends and false starts.”

“We live in a very special time. We are the first generation to know the basic laws of nature.”

“The unexpected connections in mathematics are often the most beautiful.”

“I am a physicist, not a philosopher. I am more interested in how the universe works than in why it works.”

“The study of the very small is the study of the very large.”

“In some sense, gravity is the simplest of the forces. It is the one that is most easily understood in geometric terms.”