Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.

Belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.

... one does people the best service by giving them some elevating work to do and thus indirectly elevating them.

I have not eaten enough of the tree of knowledge, though in my profession I am obligated to feed on it regularly.

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.

Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars...The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.