Quotes from Jim Peebles

Sciences evolve.

The sun can't shine forever.

I've always loved Bob Dylan.

I loved teaching. In addition to that, I love physics. And so what could be better than to talk physics to bright young students?

I love physics because it's neat and it's orderly in its own peculiar way.

I was never exposed as a kid to any real science. I read the occasional popular science book, and I loved Mechanics Illustrated, which had a lot of pseudo-science in it: It wasn't until I got to college that I began to appreciate what physics is all about, and that was really an accident also.

I came from a very small high school in which there was no guidance and not any appreciable amount of physics taught, nor much mathematics. So I didn't know what academia was all about until I got to college.

What might we learn from lines of research that are off the beaten track? They check accepted ideas, always a good thing, and there is the chance nature has prepared yet another surprise for us.

I started in engineering, where I think I could have happily remained and, who knows, made a bundle as a civil engineer or mechanical engineer. But more of my friends happened to be majoring in physics than engineering, so I switched over. No more compelling reason than that.

I've been working in cosmology since 1964.

Clocks around our house were in danger because I loved to take things apart, and failed to put them back together.

Teaching teaches not only the students, it also teaches the teacher, and physics is so full of complications that you can't in your career have thought of everything.

My advice is not to aim for prizes and awards. We are in this for the joy of research, the fascination, the love of science. That's the reward, really.

The excitement lies in the exploration of the world around us.

Sometimes one must make extended conclusions from limited data.

I went to public schools, which is to say publicly financed.

One thing that sticks in my mind is when I was a kid, and I had just learned to read, I came across one of my older sister's textbooks that explained compound pulley. I thought that was really neat, and I still do.

Life will go on. I suppose the aura of the Nobel is such that my life will change, but I don't think I'm going to let it change much. You understand, I'm used to a quiet life.

I had good time in high school, but I don't think I learned a lot.

My father worked at the Grain Exchange.

There must be enormous numbers of planets around the stars in the many galaxies in our observable universe. We may be sure that wonderful things are happening on these planets that the human race never will observe.

One of my earliest memories was throwing a tantrum because I wasn't allowed to put together the coffee percolator.

I arrived at Princeton as a graduate student from the University of Manitoba in 1958. To my great good fortune, I fell into work with Bob Dicke, a truly great physicist who decided a few years before that that gravity is too important to ignore, as it had been in recent years in physics.

My mother was a housewife, and she had no job throughout her entire life.