"You've got to get a feeling about what you're doing with your own body parts."
"Play with yourselves for just a second..."
"You need a bra!" (8.05 students to Prof. Randall)
"So all we've seen so far is something suggestive."
"That's how the fun with small oscillations starts."
"In the assignment we want to be more perverse."
"Then I can just gleefully take all kinds of derivatives..."
"If I were clever -- and I'm not stupid..."
"Then we can ask: what's the probability of penetration?"
"But for a few milliseconds after that, you feel fine." (Prof. Schechter on what happens when you fall past the event horizon of a black hole)
"Last time, our heros and heroines were in the midst of computing thermal equilibrium..."
"I just kind of defined away my ignorance here."
"One tau fits all."
"The beauty of shocks is that you bury all your ignorance in this infinitely thin area."
"Psi to the psi? Golly!"
"Keep in mind you have these two IOUs that can be redeemed at your local general relativity store."
"Once you get inside the Schwarzchild radius, there's no sending postcards home."
"Now, suppose I'm diabolical."
"It just pops out every once in awhile." (Prof. Schechter on his NY accent)
"I would hope I wouldn't lose my temper making such an argument." (Prof. Schechter on opposing the theory that low-brightness galaxies are the missing mass)
"So, if you've got important things, get them done." (Prof. Schechter on our galaxy colliding with Andromeda)
"Well, it's gotta be a mess." (Prof. Schechter on stellar collisions)
"Time delay surface is kind of the Mexican hat potential."
"Keep firing machine guns at each other and you're going to get killed."
"I'm being sardonic, dammit."
"2/0 = infinity. I never quite understood that."
"I'm being a little cute. Forgive me."
"If you want to have a real Polish life, go to Detroit."
"That's the nice thing about massive retaliation...it's really cheap."
"This is how I make my living, in pedantry."
"Don't take notes. Please don't repeat any of what I've said publicly."
"I get almost lyrical about the railroad when I think of it as a 19th century achievement."
"I think I may be lying to you."
"You'll damn well admire me for coming in from Newton in this weather."
"'Pretty good' is what you'll get in most of life." (On getting grades that are "pretty good".)
"The Earth from space is pretty darn spherical."
"But now we can do something really cool!"
"If you think about your friend, the vector..."
"Well, this is so much fun, let's just continue."
"Then, when it reaches maximum stress, a miracle occurs."
"Well, he doesn't say it -- he's dead." (On the pronunciation of an author's name)
"How could I require you to do the derivation, because I didn't do it?"
"We were kind of differentiating everything that came within arm's length."
"...led us to start differentiating willy-nilly."
"Life is much easier with infinitesimal strain."
"And if I add these together, I get half-assed--I mean, 1/2 S."
"The strain stays mainly in the plane."
"I thought about breaking into song, but I don't have the moxie to do that."
"I thought I heard a hoarse cry of recognition..."
"I lost my colored chalk, so we'll just have to tough it out."
"...which is about as rank as we get." (On fourth-rank tensors)
"Compliance and stiffness are inverses." (On the relation between stress and strain)
"Or alternatively, you could write it on your hand." (On how to remember the equations)
"If by now I haven't confused you, I'm sure you're inconfuseable."
"So that's why corks are good." (On the explanation of the elastic properties of corks)
"This function appears like the cavalry to save you at the last moment."
"Just when you're having problems and things look blackest, this function appears."
"Notice I waited until after drop date to tell you that."
"Whatever you say, you little weasel." (Jokingly to TA)
"You should eat these or something so that you know them."
"Lame's second parameter is our good friend, the shear rigidity."
"...make it equal zero if it doesn't already."
"Don't try to think of the whole universe at once--you'll go crazy."
"And I'm not going to convince you, but I can ask you to believe."
"We all freeze to death if classical mechanics is right."