Understanding of our fellow human beings...becomes fruitful only when it is sustained by sympathetic feelings in joy and sorrow.

Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.

But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.

[There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens.

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.