The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us that the human race is poor in independent and creative imagination.

The normal objective of my thought affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling.

The scientist finds his reward in what Henri Poincare calls the joy of comprehension, and not in the possibility of application to which any discovery may lead.

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 hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

I must seem like an ostrich who forever burries its head in the relativistic sands in order not to face the evil quanta.

Is it not a terrible thing to be forced by society to do things which all of us as individuals regard as abominable crimes?