A society needs famous people; the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society.

A real life, a life that leaves a deposit in the shape of something alive.... It's difficult to say what makes a life a real life.... You could also say it depends on a person being identical with himself.

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

The dignity of man is in free choice.

You can put anything into words, except your own life.

It is conceivable at least that a late generation, such as we presumably are, has particular need of the sketch, in order not to be strangled to death by inherited conceptions which preclude new births.... The sketch has direction, but no ending; the sketch as reflection of a view of life that is no longer conclusive, or is not yet conclusive.

I live, like every real man, in my work.