“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”

“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.” 

“Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”

“I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”

“ACADEMIC CHAIRS ARE MANY, but wise and noble teachers are few; lecture-rooms are numerous and large, but the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small.”

“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”

“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

“Tidak ada eksperimen yang bisa membuktikn aku benar, namun sebaliknya sebuah eksperimen saja bisa membuktikan aku salah.”

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.”

“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”

“The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”

“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”

“Politics is for the moment and equation is for eternity.”

“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.”