Try first to be a man of value; success will follow.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. When visiting the U.S. from Germany for a winter academic stay.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem-the most important of all human problems.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

I am not more gifted than anybody else. I am just more curious than the average person and I will not give up a problem until I have found the proper solution.

Work is the only thing I do to escape the corruption of praise.