Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

There's not a whole lot of new atoms out there.

... the patriotic art of lying for one's country.

...we are apt to forget that the vast majority of men and women who fell under the totalitarian spell was activated by unselfish motives, ready to accept the role of martyr or executioner, as the cause demanded.

I believe the true function of age is memory. I'm recording as fast as I can.

If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist.

Don't let the University get in the way of your education.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.

We are his, To serve him nobly in the common cause, True to the death, but not to be his slaves.

The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.

No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems very unlikely that anyone will do so for many years.

Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

We can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys.

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Common sense hides shame.

As for a camel To thread the postern of a small needle's eye. -King Richard II. Act v. Sc. 5.