There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the weaknesses and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves untouched by them.
The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking.[Also known for:]All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.
The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.[Der wahre Wert eines Menschen ist in erster Linie dadurch bestimmt, in welchem Grad und in welchem Sinn er zur Befreiung vom Ich gelangt ist.]
The strange thing about growing old is that the intimate identification with the here and now is slowly lost; one feels transposed into infinity, more or less alone, no longer in hope or fear, only observing.
The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.
The search and striving for truth and knowledge is one of the highest of man’s qualities – though often the pride is most loudly voiced by those who strive the least.
The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
