The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.

The only cure for vanity is laughter. And the only fault that's laughable is vanity.

The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.

The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

It is with our entire past ... that we desire, will and act ... from this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person ... that is why our duration is irreversible.