“If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker.”

“When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this: In our life together, it was decided I would make all of the big decisions and my wife would make all of the little decisions. For fifty years, we have held true to that agreement. I believe that is the reason for the success in our marriage. However, the strange thing is that in fifty years, there hasn’t been one big decision.”

“More and more I come to value charity and love of one's fellow being above everything else...All our lauded technological progress-our very civilization-is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.”

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

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”

“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.”

“In scientific thinking are always present elements of poetry. Science and music requires a thought homogeneous.”

“Oh juventud nunca dejes de pensar...”

“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

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