Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.

Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value.

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.