For other great mathematicians or philosophers, he used the epithets magnus, or clarus, or clarissimus; for Newton alone he kept the prefix summus.

He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.{Describing the writing style of famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss}

He is a type of our best — our rarest. Electrical, I was going to say, beyond anyone, perhaps, ever was: charged, surcharged. Not a founder of new philosophies — not of that build. But...

It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I have always been taught to take a broad overview of things,...

Socialism, Puritanism, Philistinism, Christianity—he saw them all as allotropic forms of democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of quantity against quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and enterprising, of the botched...

He was not of an age, but for all time!

He bantered us, challenged us, electrified us . . . At times his eloquence held us silent as images and some witty turn, some humorous phrase brought roars of applause. At times we cheered almost...

He was of the opinion… that his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said...

He claimed to be an atheist, but he always used religious symbolism…

He had remained steadfast in agnosticism and therefore, as Mabel took comfort in remarking, ‘he never denied God.’ Neither did he affirm God.

He rejected traditional religious beliefs (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) not on the basis of any reasoned argument, nor even with an expression of emotional antipathy, for he loved to use religious expressions and metaphors, but...

By now, he was also a ‘Protestant Atheist’, which he remained all his life.

He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.{Edison’s opinion of the great }