Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.

Diversity is essential to happiness and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect in all planned social systems.

To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; licence, the right to do what you like.

Abstract work, if one wishes to do it well, must be allowed to destroy one's humanity; one raises a monument which is at the same time a tomb, in which, voluntarily, one slowly inters oneself.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.