Our culture lionizes entrepreneurs who navigate daring switchbacks in their career. Steve Jobs was admired not just for Apple, but also his detour to found Pixar. Elon Musk is revered for helming Tesla AND SpaceX. But don't be distracted by other people's winding paths. I believe you should celebrate your single-mindedness, and stick to your own overarching idea — for as long as it holds your own fascination. In my experience, that could last your entire career.

AI without validation is too unreliable to be of use in any serious application.

But my own mottos are, “Don’t imagine for a moment that you’re going to be able to express yourself.” ... And most aspiring artists think, “I have something to say.”

Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.  I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be.

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics.  Why did I enjoy it?  I used to play with it.  I used to do whatever I felt like doing—it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.

So I got this new attitude.  Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

We'd walk in the canyons, and we'd often walk with Bethe, and Von Neumann, and Bacher. It was a great pleasure.

Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys.  You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students.  Nothing!

It is necessary, I believe, to accept this idea, not only for science, but also for other things; it is of great value to acknowledge ignorance.  It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life we don't necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can – and that is what we should do.