I believe that there have been civilisations in the past that were familiar with atomic energy, and that by misusing it they were totally destroyed.

Physical science enjoys the distinction of being the most fundamental of the experimental sciences, and its laws are obeyed universally, so far as is known, not merely by inanimate things, but also by living organisms, in their minutest parts, as single individuals, and also as whole communities. It results from this that, however complicated a series of phenomena may be and however many other sciences may enter into its complete presentation, the purely physical aspect, or the application of the known laws of matter and energy, can always be legitimately separated from the other aspects.

[The human control of atomic energy could] virtually provide anyone who wanted it with a private sun of his own.

There is something sublime about its aloofness from and its indifference to its external environment.

I believe that there have been civilisations in the past that were familiar with atomic energy, and that by misusing it they were totally destroyed.

Some of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared.

The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today.