“I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.”

We never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind.

The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.

Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.

In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times.

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.

A great doctor kills more people than a great general.

The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.

Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.

Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things.

We live in the best of all possible worlds.

All things in God are spontaneous.

Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future.

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

The ups and downs, the problems and stress, along with all the happiness, have given me optimism and hope because I am living proof of survival.

Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That’s the place that governments often don’t want to, or can’t, work.

The balance of evidence both from the cell-free system and from the study of mutation, suggests that this does not occur at random, and that triplets coding the same amino acid may well be rather similar.

Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology.

I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being – to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame.

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact.

They have found absolutely nothing to connect us with the Communist Party of the United States. In regards to your question about whether I myself am a communist, as I said I do not belong to any other organization.

A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here.