's kindness to me and my wife went beyond his help with this research. He had my wife and me to dinner at his house and at that dinner I went to the … - Steven Weinberg

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

It seems to me that we are in the position of a company of players who have by chance found their way into a great theater. Outside, the city streets are dark and lifeless, but in the theater the lights are on, the air is warm, and the walls are wonderfully decorated. However, no scripts are found, so the players begin to improvise—a little psychological drama, a little poetry, whatever comes to mind. Some even set themselves to explain the stage machinery. The players do not forget that they are just amusing themselves, and that they will have to return to the darkness outside the theater, but while on the stage they do their best to give a good performance. I suppose that this is a rather melancholy view of human life, but melancholy is one of the distinctive creations of our species, and not without its own consolations.

... I found that I was unable to explain the foundations of quantum mechanics in a way that I found entirely satisfactory.