“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.”

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”

“Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move.”

“Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.”

“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”

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

“It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry.”

“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 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.”

“We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.”

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

“There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.”

“Due cose sono infinite: l'universo e la stupidità umana, ma riguardo l'universo ho ancora dei dubbi.”