Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.

One has to do something new in order to see something new.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers... That is also why in all countries women are more prone to utter prophecies.

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it.

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was - nobody any longer wanted to be that.

If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on...

Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.

What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?

Ideas too are a life and a world.

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.