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The possible world that excites me the most-the future we can still have on this one. The misuse of science endangers our civilization, but science also has redemptive powers. It can cleanse a planetary atmosphere overburdened with carbon dioxide. It can set life free to neutralize the toxins that we have scattered so carelessly. In a society that aspires to become a democracy, a conscious and motivated public can will this possible world into existence.

Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments, brooding over these things and nursing my loneliness, I say to myself: "There are cases when success is a tragedy." There are moments when I regret my whole career, when my very success seems to be a mistake. I think that I was born for a life of intellectual interest. I was certainly brought up for one. The day when that accident turned my mind from college to business seems to be the most unfortunate day in my life. I think that I should be much happier as a scientist or writer, perhaps. I should then be in my natural element, and if I were doomed to loneliness I should have comforts to which I am now a stranger. That's the way I feel every time I pass the abandoned old building of the City College. The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no brains. Why, then, should I ascribe my triumph to special ability?

The words Einstein chose to open the 1939 World's Fair echo in my brain: "If science, like art, is to perform its mission truly and fully, its achievements must enter not only superficially but with their inner meaning into the consciousness of the people."

The dearest days in one's life are those that seem very far and very near at once.

The basic rules of the road for science: Test ideas by experiment and observation. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. And question everything. including authority.

Science, like love, is a means to that transcendence, to that soaring experience of the oneness of being fully alive. The scientific approach to nature and my understanding of love are the same:

This life, my dear bird, consists of a haphazard sequence of accidental meetings and partings, very few of which can ever be anticipated, avoided or fully understood. The element of sheer Chance, my friend, conflicting as it does with the first principles of Causation, denies any premeditated plan on the part of Destiny. Destiny, therefore, may only be defined as the sum total of one’s accumulated experiences, which are themselves accidental and purposeless. ‘Purpose,’ you deduce from this, is an interpretation imposed upon a sequence of events after the fact.”

“If one doesn’t learn from one’s unhappy experiences,” he wisely observed, “what’s the point of all that suffering?”

Mere abstention from a life of evil does not constitute a life devoted to good works.

You will observe, I think, that repentance is seldom whole-hearted, and generally arises from such base and ignoble motives as feeling sorry for yourself in dire circumstances.

Knowing that you possess a talent is half the battle in mastering it.

What use to covet loot, when even stars must die?