By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right also implies a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man.

Failure is success in progress

The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the "opium of the masses"—cannot hear the music of the spheres.

A theory is the more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended the range of its applicability.

Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries — not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.