In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.

The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.

It's not what you have lost, but what you have left that counts.

From the height of their disillusionment they look down upon those whom they despise as simple souls. For my part I have no sympathy with this outlook. All disenchantment is to me a malady, which, it is true, certain circumstances may render inevitable, but which none the less, when it occurs, is to be cured as soon as possible, not to be regarded as a higher form of wisdom.

Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.