Alfred Nobel

“Lawyers have to make a living, and can only do so by inducing people to believe that a straight line is crooked.”

“Worry is the stomach's worst poison.”

“Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age.”

“Home is where I work, and I work everywhere.”

“For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.”

“A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.”

“I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.”

“Justice is to be found only in imagination.”

“The capital ... shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to those persons who shall have rendered humanity the best services during the past year. ... One-fifth to the person having made the most important discovery or invention in the science of physics, one-fifth to the person who has made the most eminent discovery or improvement in chemistry, one-fifth to the one having made the most important discovery with regard to physiology or medicine, one-fifth to the person who has produced the most distinguished idealistic work of literature, and one-fifth to the person who has worked the most or best for advancing the fraternization of all nations and for abolishing or diminishing the standing armies as well as for the forming or propagation of committees of peace.”

“Kant's style is so heavy that after his pure reason, the reader longs for unreasonableness.”

“If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.”

“The first time I saw nitroglycerine was in the beginning of the Crimean War. Professor Zinin in St. Petersburg exhibited some to my father and me, and struck some on an anvil to show that only the part touched by the hammer exploded without spreading.”

“Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.”

“Contentment is the only real wealth.”

“One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.”

“It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.”

“A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man.”

“On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

“Lying is the greatest of all sins.”

“I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results.”