No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.

. . . it seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.

I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty and both - precision and certainty are impossible to attain.