Thought is not a gift to man but a laborious, precarious and volatile acquisition.

The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands blood stained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.

The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence.

Life is a struggle with things to maintain itself among them. Concepts are the strategic plan we form in answer to the attack.

The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart.

Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

Life is fired at us point blank.