My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.

The creative principle [of science] resides in mathematics.

One is born into a herd of buffaloes and must be glad if one is not trampled under foot before one's time.

The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.

Whatever there is of God and goodness in the universe, it must work itself out and express itself through us. We cannot stand aside and let God do it.