Decisive inventions and discoveries always are initiated by an intellectual or moral stimulus as their actual motivating force, but, usually, the final impetus to human action is given by material impulses ... merchants stood as a driving force behind the heroes of the age of discovery; this first heroic impulse to conquer the world emanated from very mortal forces

Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.

Health alone does not suffice. To be happy, to become creative, man must always be strengthened by faith in the meaning of his own existence.

It remains an irrefragable law of history that contemporaries are denied a recognition of the early beginnings of the great movements which determine their times.

When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.

Nothing that has ever been thought and said with a clear mind and pure ethical strength is totally in vain; even if it comes froma weak hand and is imperfectly formed, it inspires the ethical spirit to constantly renewed creation.

The greater part of our best years has been passed for our generation in these two great worldconvulsions. All will be changed after this war, which spends in one month more than nations earned before in yearsthere is no more security in our time than in those of the Reformation or the fall of Rome.