The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

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

Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.

The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.

The motive power of democracy is love

The universe... is a machine for the making of gods.

A situation is always comic if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings.