“Lawyers have to make a living, and can only do so by inducing people to believe that a straight line is crooked.”

The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue just the same until the forces of the circumstances render them impossible.

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.

Contentment is the only real wealth.

I am a misanthrope yet utterly benevolent.

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.

The only true solution would be a convention under which all the governments would bind themselves to defend collectively any country that was attacked.

Lying is the greatest of all sins.

Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.

It is not sufficient to be worthy of respect in order to be respected.

I am a misanthrope and yet utterly benevolent, have more than one screw loose yet am a super-idealist who digests philosophy more efficiently than food.

It is my express wish that in awarding the [Nobel Prizes] no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.

A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.

The truthful man is usually a liar.

Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.

It is only the belief and the confidence we have in a God why man is able to understand his own social institutions, and move and live like a rational human being.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

As long as you believe in yourself, there is no limit to the greatness you’ll do. The universe is magic I promise it’s true.

My spirit will rise from the grave and the world will see I was right.

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.

We believe that in reducing the scope and importance of our errors, we are properly humble; in truth, we are merely unwilling to bear the weight of our true responsibility.