"Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine."

"From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did, what poetry must be."

"Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry."

"The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history."

"Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him."

"Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity."

"I'm going to marry a Jewish woman because I like the idea of getting up Sunday morning and going to the deli."

"I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves."