Genius is just enduring patience, said Buffon. This is far from complete. Genius is impatience in ideas and patience with the facts: a lively imagination and a calm judgment, rather like a liquid boiling in a cup that remains cold.

Civilization is the art of creating useless needs.

Isn't this the perfect image of the noblest selflessness, and thereby presents an example and a model? It should be inspiring: like them, we are the units of a great social body, like them, we can serve and contemplate death with equanimity, subordinating our individual consciousness to collective consciousness.

To succeed in science, one must doubt to succeed in life, one must be sure.

Dieu, c'est le voile mystérieux sous lequel nous cachons notre ignorance de la cause première. God is the mysterious veil under which we hide our ignorance of the cause.

The paradox is the seed of truth. This germ just needs a fertile ground to flourish and bear fruit.

Truth is different from error in two respects: it is a little harder to prove and more difficult to admit.