When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.
Artists and creative workers - people who have accomplished work worthwhile have had a very high sense of the way to do things. They haven't been contented with mediocrity. They haven't confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others do them, but always a little better. Few are those who see with their own eyesand feel with their own hearts.
There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.
Science has gone a long way toward helping man to free himself from the burden of hard labor; yet, science itself is not a liberator. It creates means, not goals. It is up to men to utilize those means to achieve reasonable goals.
I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful." He further added: "No man can read the gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life...Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.
I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton. Refering to James Clerk Maxwell's contributions to physics.
I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew.
So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.