History is littered with examples of men who would become gods, but only one example of God becoming Man.
Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.
Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you.
What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work!
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation (...)The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.