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

“I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.”

“To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.”

“Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.”

“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.”

“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.”

“The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.”

“It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

“Growth comes through analogy; through seeing how things connect, rather than only seeing how they might be different.”

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”

“I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.”

“Imagination is intelligence having fun.”

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”