30 Quotes by Robert B. Laughlin

One of the terrific aspects of MIT in those days was the enormous variety of experimental work that either took place there or was talked about in seminars by outside speakers aggressively recruited by the faculty.

But it was impressed upon me that there was such a thing as good study habits and that I would have to acquire them if I wanted to be a scholar.

I, for example, used to take appliances apart when they broke in an attempt to fix them, which I rarely did successfully, being a kid.

Over the course of time this gave us a deep respect for ideas, both our own and those of others, and an understanding that conflict through debate is a powerful means of revealing truth.

The experience that firmly placed me on a course toward a professional career in science was the four years I spent as an undergraduate at Berkeley.

Another important aspect of our home was respect for ideas.

It was at this moment that I wrote my first important paper in theoretical physics. I was 32 years old, 5 years beyond the alleged age of senility for theorists.

I owe my interest in mathematics to my father, or more precisely the sense that mathematics was something important and mysterious.

But through my interests in electron motion in vacuum tubes I discovered a need to describe trajectories of moving particles with equations.