When I was young, all I wanted and expected from life was to sit quietly in some corner doing my work without the public paying attention to me. And now see what has become of me.

It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.

It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field into a single structure. Only so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close.

Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.

I wouldn't want to live if I did not have my work. In any case, it's good that I'm already old and personally don't have to count on a prolonged future.

A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.

Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community.