In the post war period I began again to have my doubts about Russian policy.

The last time when I handed over information was in February or March 1949.

I joined the Communist Party because I felt I had to be in some organization.

I was a student in Germany when Hitler came to power.

Finally Germany's attack on Russia seemed to confirm that Russia was not shirking and was prepared to carry out a foreign policy with the risk of war with Germany.

There is nobody I know by name who is concerned with collecting information for the Russian authorities. There are people whom I know by sight whom I trusted with my life.

I was ready to accept the philosophy that the Party is right and that in the coming struggle you could not permit yourself any doubts after the party had made a decision.

The Communist Party said that I must finish my studies because after the revolution in Germany people would be required with technical knowledge to take part in the building of the Communist Germany.

Before I joined the project most of the English people with whom I had made personal contacts were left wing and affected to some degree or other by the same kind of philosophy.

I was in the underground until I left Germany.

Since coming to Harwell I have met English people of all kinds, and I have come to see in many of them a deep rooted firmness which enables them to lead a decent way of life.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.” Easy enough to say when you’re a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars.

our struggle to celebrate each other is what's proven most difficult in being human

You can't replace one dog with another any more than you can replace one person with another, but that's not to say you shouldn't get more dogs and people in your life.

Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.

Attraversiamo (meaning "Lets cross over" in Italian)

To be understood a writer has to explain almost everything.

I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an office.

Never try to fool children, they expect nothing, and therefore see everything.

Even if we want to eradicate our ghosts, our dead, our murdered, even if you erase a name and the record of the existence of a person, somebody remembers.

If you do not join the polluted, then you are pure; if you reject society in search of purity, that is not purity but fanaticism.