Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

If you had the power to destroy the world, would you do so?

It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of subconscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking.... Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my subconsciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with a blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what happened as if in a revelation.

As I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, or which [his family] profoundly disapproved. Everytime the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." After some fifty or sixty repititions, this remark ceased to amuse me.

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.