Peter Higgs

"This summer I have discovered something totally useless."

"When you look at a vacuum in a quantum theory of fields, it isn't exactly nothing."

"The way that the background fields generates mass is rather like the way in which when light passes through a transparent medium like glass or water, it gets slowed down. It no longer travels with the fundamental velocity of light c. And that's the way to think of the generation of mass."

"There is a sort of mythology that grows up about what happened, which is different from what really did happen."

"It’s about understanding! Understanding the world!"

"The point came when people were doing things I didn't feel competent to do myself. I'm not being modest, I honestly get lost. I was lucky in spotting what I did when I did, but there comes a point where you realise what you're doing is not going to be much good."

"Higgs mechanism should be renamed the “ABEGHHK'tH mechanism”"

"It's very nice to be right sometimes ... it has certainly been a long wait."