The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perservereingly during fifty-five years; that word is failure

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.

Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.