I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Great men too make mistakes, and many among them do it so often that one is almost tempted to call them little men.

All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.

Many intelligent people, when about to write . . . , force on their minds a certain notion about style, just as they screw up their faces when they sit for their portraits.

Men still have to be governed by deception.

Do not judge God's world from your own. Trim your own hedge as you wish and plant your flowers in the patterns you can understand, but do not judge the garden of nature from your little window box.

The construction of the universe is certainly very much easier to explain than is that of the plant.