If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. 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.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

The most important thing is to not stop questioning.

Insofar as we may at all claim that slavery has been abolished today, we owe its abolition to the practical consequences of science

This subject brings me to that vilest offspring of the herd mind -- the odious militia. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake -- the spinal cord would have been amply sufficient. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism -- how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings.