If a photographic plate under the center of a lens focused on the heavens is exposed for hours, it comes to reveal stars so far away that even the most powerful telescopes fail to reveal them to the naked eye. In a similar way, time and concentration allow the intellect to perceive a ray of light in the darkness of the most complex problem.

Even granting that the genius subjected to the test of critical inspection emerges free from all error, we should consider that everything he has discovered in a given domain is almost nothing in comparison with what is left to be discovered.

As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery.

Physical pain is easily forgotten, but a moral chagrin lasts indefinitely.

What a cruel irony of fate, to pair together, like Siamese twins united by the shoulders, scientific adversaries of such contrasting character!

I would be the last to deny that the greatest scientific pioneers belonged to an aristocracy of the spirit and were exceptionally intelligent, something that we as modest investigators will never attain, no matter how much we exert ourselves. Nevertheless ... I continue to believe that there is always room for anyone with average intelligence ... to utilize his energy and ... any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain, and that even the least gifted may, like the poorest land that has been well-cultivated and fertilized, produce an abundant harvest.

Intellectual work is an act of creation. It is as if the mental image that is studied over a period of time were to sprout appendages like an ameba—outgrowths that extend in all directions while avoiding one obstacle after another—before interdigitating with related ideas.