“Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators”

“The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death”

“The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination”

“Aesthetics, ethics, and many good things in humans are contagious.”

“The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud, and (the productive) Einstein were scholars but not academics. It has always been hard to do genuine - and no perishable - work within institutions”

“true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing”

“If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.”