“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

“Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God.”

“Success = 1 part work + 1 part play + 1 part keep your mouth shut”

“An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion soon degenerates. For force always attract men of low morality.”

“You make experiments and I make theories. Do you know the difference? A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

“There is no great discoveries and advances, as long as there is an unhappy child on earth. / Ne možemo govoriti o napretku čovječanstva, dok na svijetu ima nesretne djece.”

“La teoria è quando si sa tutto e niente funziona. La pratica è quando tutto funziona e nessuno sa il perché. Noi abbiamo messo insieme la teoria e la pratica: non c'è niente che funzioni... e nessuno sa il perché!”

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”

“If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.”

“Man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”

“To invent something, all you need is imagination and a big pile of junk.”

“I don't pretend to understand the universe — it's much bigger than I am.”

“Es gibt zwei Arten sein Leben zu leben: entweder so, als wäre nichts ein Wunder, oder so, als wäre alles eines. Ich glaube an Letzteres.”

“The tendencies we have mentioned are something new for America. They arose when, under the influence of the two World Wars and the consequent concentration of all forces on a military goal, a predominantly military mentality developed, which with the almost sudden victory became even more accentuated. The characteristic feature of this mentality is that people place the importance of what Bertrand Russell so tellingly terms “naked power” far above all other factors which affect the relations between peoples. The Germans, misled by Bismarck’s successes in particular, underwent just such a transformation of their mentality—in consequence of which they were entirely ruined in less than a hundred years. I must frankly confess that the foreign policy of the United States since the termination of hostilities has reminded me, sometimes irresistibly, of the attitude of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, and I know that, independent of me, this analogy has most painfully occurred to others as well. It is characteristic of the military mentality that non-human factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc.) are held essential, while the human being, his desires and thoughts—in short, the psychological factors—are considered as unimportant and secondary. Herein lies a certain resemblance to Marxism, at least insofar as its theoretical side alone is kept in view. The individual is degraded to a mere instrument; he becomes “human materiel.” The normal ends of human aspiration vanish with such a viewpoint. Instead, the military mentality raises “naked power” as a goal in itself—one of the strangest illusions to which men can succumb.”