“The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.”

“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”

“Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.”

“I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking”

“Deux choses sont infinies : l’Univers et la bêtise humaine. Mais, en ce qui concerne l’Univers, je n’en ai pas encore acquis la certitude absolue.”

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

“Truth is what stands the test of experience. ”

“Children don’t heed the life experiences of their parents, and nations ignore history. Bad lessons always have to be learned anew. ”

“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”

“Everything is energy and that's all there is. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”

“Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...?”

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”

“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.”

“A problem can't be solved with the same level of thinking that created it.”