At the same time it offered the hope, as it still does, that improved understanding could better the lot of mankind. For me, growing up in the 1930s, the two motivations powerfully reinforced each other.

After the United States entered the war, I joined the Naval Reserve and spent ninety days in a Columbia University dormitory learning to be a naval officer.

I studied economics and made it my career for two reasons. The subject was and is intellectually fascinating and challenging, particularly to someone with taste and talent for theoretical reasoning and quantitative analysis.

The miserable failures of capitalist economies in the Great Depression were root causes of worldwide social and political disasters.

Whatever science and philosophy may do for mankind, the world can never outgrow its need of the simplicity that is in Christ.

I'm doing physics because I'm curious about how it works - full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, don't worry about whether somebody is going to be able to do an experiment next week, just figure it out.

I like the freedom of research. Plus, if I fail in science, I know I can always survive because I have an M.D. This has been my insurance policy.

Throughout my work, I have assumed that the standard model is correct, and hence, the Higgs boson should be found. Although this is not directly connected to string theory, the discovery of the Higgs boson demonstrated the power of theoretical reasoning.