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From an early age I was very, very fascinated by uncertainty.

Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.

My theory was that what I had to do was make a study of human behavior.

You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous.

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 realized that you could formulate theories about human and social phenomena in language and pictures and whatever you wanted on the computer, and you didn't have to go through this straitjacket, adding a lot of numbers.

I have devoted my life to uncertainty. Certainty is the death of wisdom, thought, creativity.

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.