“Elementary particles are terribly boring, which is one reason why we're so interested in them.”
"Elementary particles and the laws of Physics" in The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures (1987)
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Steven Weinberg 46
American theoretical physicist 1933Related quotes

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter I, Sec. 9
Context: There is no kind of material, no body, and no thing that can be produced or conceived of, which is not made up of elementary particles; and nature does not admit of a truthful exploration in accordance with the doctrines of the physicists without an accurate demonstration of the primary causes of things, showing how and why they are as they are.

Letter to Michele Besso (10 September 1952), Letter n°190, Correspondance, 1903-1955 (1972), by Pierre Speziali and Michele Angelo Besso
1950s

“The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.”
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

"The Big Higgs Question" http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/07/09/big-higgs-question/, The New York Review of Books, 9 July 2012

Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Context: But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato's Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms. "All things are numbers" is a sentence attributed to Pythagoras. The only mathematical forms available at that time were such geometric forms as the regular solids or the triangles which form their surface. In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms but of a much more complicated nature.