To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility.