“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.”

“A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.”

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

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

“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”

“A man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal.”

“A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”

“Hay una fuerza motriz más poderosa que el vapor, la electricidad y la energía atómica. Esa fuerza es la voluntad”

“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. ”

“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.”

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

“A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.”

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

“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.”