I have no need for this hypothesis

"Intelligent Design means that everything I can't explain is done by God: "'I have no need for this hypothesis,' Pierre-Simon Laplace's famous retort after getting grilled by Napoleon for not mentioning God in his mathematical masterwork Mecanique Celeste (Celestial Mechanics)."

His dad was a down and dirty plumber who didn't like that his son had decided not to be a plumber himself.
"The tough guy looked at me and said, 'What the—do you mean, you're not going to be an engineer? What are you going to be—a ballet dancer?' I said, 'I want to be something else, a physicist.'
" 'Physicist? Physicist? What the hell is a physicist?' . . . I held my ground and answered, 'It's a kind of scientist.' . . . I was not sure that I could explain so I took a shortcut. I said, 'A scientist like Einstein.'
" 'Einstein?' he said. 'Yeah, Einstein.' For a full minute he stood silent, in deep thought. Then he said, 'Are you any good at this stuff?'"