“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

“I love Humanity but I hate humans”

“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

“Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.”

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

“This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.

“One picture is worth a thousand words”

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

“It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing.”

“The mind that opens to a new idea never comes back to its original size.”

“The best that Gauss has given us was likewise an exclusive production. If he had not created his geometry of surfaces, which served Riemann as a basis, it is scarcely conceivable that anyone else would have discovered it. I do not hesitate to confess that to a certain extent a similar pleasure may be found by absorbing ourselves in questions of pure geometry.”

“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.”

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”