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

“live as if you were to die tommorow. dream as if you were to live forever”

“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.”

“The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.”

“When the solution is simple, God is answering.”

“Human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life.”

“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.”

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

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

“Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.”

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

“Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.”

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

“The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.”

“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”