Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.

science has now been for a long time - and to an ever-increasing extent - a collective enterprise. Actually, new results are always, in fact, the work of specific individuals; but, save perhaps for rare exceptions, the value of any result depends on such a complex set of interrelations with past discoveries and possible future researches that even the mind of the inventor cannot embrace the whole.

Patriotism is idolatry of the self.

Whoever is uprooted himself uproots others. Whoever is rooted himself doesn't uproot others.

Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.

Just as a person who is always asserting that he is too good-natured is the very one from whom to expect, on some occasion, the coldest and most unconcerned cruelty, so when any group sees itself as the bearer of civilization this very belief will betray it into behaving barbarously at the first opportunity.

We must love all facts, not for their consequences, but because in each fact God is there present.