The effect of the consolations of religion may be compared to that of a narcotic.

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

The voice of the intellect is soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endless rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind.

Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

The time comes when each of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will.