Even if only 2 percent of those assigned to perform military service should announce their refusal to fight, governments would be powerless, they would not dare send such a large number of people to jail.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men and all countries — not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of mankind as civilized.
What is significant in one's own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.