The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

God does not play dice.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

Shortly afterwards my father told me that he might be going into the Eastern Zone of Germany. At that time my own mind was closer to his than it had ever been before, because he...

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

I was a student in Germany when Hitler came to power.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.

Since coming to Harwell I have met English people of all kinds, and I have come to see in many of them a deep rooted firmness which enables them to lead a decent way of...

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

I was in the underground until I left Germany.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

I want to know [God’s] thoughts, the rest are details.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Since that time I have had continuous contact with the persons who were completely unknown to me, except that I knew they would hand whatever information I gave them to the Russian authorities.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

The environment is everything that isn’t me.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

I was lucky because on the morning after the burning of the Reichstag I left my home very early to catch a train to Berlin for the conference of our student organization and that is...

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.