Scientific greatness is less a matter of intelligence than character; if the scientist refuses to compromise or accept incomplete answers and persists in grappling the most basic and difficult questions.
We must begin to inculcate our children against militarism by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal it's horror. I would teach peace rather than war.
Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life.
Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking
Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labour of all.
Personally, I experience the greatest degree of pleasure in having contact with works of art. They furnish me with happy feelings of an intensity that I cannot derive from other sources.
If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self... so the hell with it... I will continue to be unconcerned about it, which surely has the advantage that I'm left in peace by many a fop who would otherwise come to see me.
The Nuremberg Trial of the German war criminals was tacitly based on the recognition of the principle: criminal actions cannot be excused if committed on government orders; conscience supersedes the authority of the law of the state.
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.