The capital … shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to those persons who shall have rendered humanity the best services during the past year. … One-fifth to...

The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops.

I am a misanthrope, but exceedingly benevolent; I am very cranky, and am a super-idealist. … I can digest philosophy better than food.

And this is the ultimate lesson that our knowledge of the mode of transmission of typhus has taught us: Man carries on his skin a parasite, the louse. Civilization rids him of it. Should man...

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.

Hope is nature’s veil for hiding truth’s nakedness

I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results.

Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age

It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.