Contact between the intellectual and the masses must not be lost. It is necessary for the elevation of society and no less so for renewing the strength of the intellectual worker; for the flower of science does not grow in the desert.

It is just as important to make knowledge live and to keep it alive as to solve specific problems.

I am only coming to Princeton to research, not to teach. There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools. The only rational way of educating is to be an example – of what to avoid, if one can’t be the other sort.

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

The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

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

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z . Work is x ; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.