You imagine that I look back on my life's work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?

You think you have troubles with mathematics . . . I assure you mine are still bigger.

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.

Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.

The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.