“It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.”

“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”

“As crimes pile up, they become invisible.”

“Art is not a mirror held up to realitybut a hammer with which to shape it.”

“When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.”

“The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.”

“Who built Thebes of the seven gates?In the books you will find the name of kings.Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?And Babylon, many times demolished.Who raised it up so many times? In what housesOf gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finishedDid the masons go? Great RomeIs full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whomDid the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song,Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled AtlantisThe night the ocean engulfed itThe drowning still bawled for their slaves.”