“Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.”

“I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as you in my search for truth.”

“My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?”

“The modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.”

“In the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.”

“If I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics, a science which proceeds very cautiously and admits nothing as established until it has been rigidly demonstrated.”

“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”

“Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.”

“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”

“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best. So, let us be alert — alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.”

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”