Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody’s attention will turn elsewhere.

No matter how you were taught by your teacher about how to recite a poem, it is impossible to wear your teacher’s smiling face to the stage. You got to put on that smile.

The question is not “can you wear your father’s shoes?”. The question is “can you walk in your father’s shoes?”. It is one thing having a mentor and it is another thing to become like...

The best university in the world is neither Oxford nor Harvard. The best university is “youniversity”. YOU got the lecture halls of thoughts in YOU! You got everything you need to graduate with first class...

I saw [Linus Pauling] as a brilliant lecturer and a man with a fantastic memory, and a great, great showman. I think he was the century’s greatest chemist. No doubt about it.