Steven Weinberg

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

Whether he knew it or not, the life he lived was his penance. Punishing himself, for what he believes are his sins. Consciously or subconsciously, he creates the world he lives in. Never believing that he is deserving happiness, deserving joy. His self-destructive nature, in his eyes, and his eyes only, is justified. Everyone is deserving absolution, but he needs to understand, that he is the only one able to forgive himself.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.