“It is only men who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worth while.”

“Everyone must become their own person, however frightful that may be.”

“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.”

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

“Play is the highest form of research.”

“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.”

“You can be nothing or everything is a miracle. I believe everything is a miracle.”

“Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.”

“Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.”

“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.” 

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” 

“I love Humanity but I hate humans”

“Coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous.”

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

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