"But then, anyone was capable of any manner of atrocities if they wanted something bad enough. People could justify anything to themselves if they wanted it bad enough. No one was immune to that."

"I think the rules where different there. It was all about science, but the science was magical. It didn't care about whether something could be done. It was about whether it should be done, and the answer was always, always yes."

"Little do men perceive what solitude is and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company and faces are but a gallery of pictures and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love."

"If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations."

"I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement."

"For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?"