Our students wanted to know everything: but only the newest theory seemed to them worth bothering with. Knowing nothing of the intellectual achievements of the past, they kept fresh and intact their enthusiasm for ‘the latest thing’. Fashion dominated their interest: they valued ideas not for themselves but for the prestige that they could wring from them.

I can’t help thinking that science would be more appealing if it had no practical use.

All the essentials of humanity’s artistic treasures can be found in New York.

There is one fact that can be established. The only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing.

There is today a frightful disappearance of living species, be they plants or animals. And it’s clear that the density of human beings has become so great, if I can say so, that they have begun to poison themselves. And the world in which I am finishing my existence is no longer a world that I like.

I hate travelling and explorers.

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.

The world began without man, and it will end without him.

Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.

I am the place in which something has occurred.