"One kills a man, one is an assassin one kills millions, one is a conqueror one kills everybody, one is a god."

"To be adult is to be alone."

"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it."

"A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in."

"What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself."

"One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king."

"I'm crazy about Grant: his character, his nature, his science in fighting and everything else. But I don't like the idea that he never accepted the blame for anything, always found someone else to blame for any mistake that was ever made, including blaming Prentiss for Shiloh."

"Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly."