A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.

I would give something to know for whose sake precisely those deeds were really done which report says were done for the fatherland.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.

Some people read only because they are too lazy to think.

Brevity: To say at once whatever is to be said.

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.