Look at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.

The hardest thing is to see what's under your very eyes.

People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.

Let us live, while we are alive!

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

No matter what one says, you can recognize only those matters that are equal to you. Only rulers who possess extraordinary abilities will recognize and esteem properly extraordinary abilities in their subjects and servants.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.