Albert Einstein Quotes

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

"Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."

"The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives."

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

"The ideas that have lighted my way have been kindness, beauty and truth."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

"Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."

           

"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."

"The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service."

           

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."

"We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart."

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

"The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle."

"The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man."

"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."

"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling love."

"If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind."

"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age."

"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community."

"It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature."

"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science."

"I made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification-the danger that the Germans would make them."

"The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life."

"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education is a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."

"I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind."

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war."

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

"The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat."

"Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age."

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty."

"Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools."

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."

"The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action."

"I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field."

"Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound."

"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding."

"Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character."

"The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while."

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people."

"During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief."

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

"The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed."

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."

"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance."

"Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature."

"Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

"If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it."

"That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

"All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them."

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

"Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it."

"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"

"Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift."

"I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas."

"Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the inquiring constructive mind."

"Love is a better teacher than duty."

"To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground."

"Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind."

"Do you believe in immortality? No, and one life is enough for me."

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."

"I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed."

"Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized."

"In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same."

"One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion."

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."

"Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized."

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."

"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike-and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."

"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."

"A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be."

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."

"Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

"It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely."

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

"A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem."

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue."

"An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information."

"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them."

"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."

"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."

"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones."

"Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions."

"Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race."

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

"The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder."

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them."

"It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man."

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."

"Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police."

"All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions."

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

"The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science."

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."

"Truth is what stands the test of experience."

"When the solution is simple, God is answering."

"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas."

"At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice."

"Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."

"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

"The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible."

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is."

"The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive."

"Only a life in the service of others is worth living."

"It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion."

"Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One."

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

"If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."

"I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience."

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone."

"After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well."

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."

"How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business."

"All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual."

"The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax."

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish."

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."

"There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there."

"The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks."

"Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."

"Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events."

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."

"The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms."

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

"If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."

"Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity."

"It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid."

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?"

"We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings."

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."

"I never think of the future - it comes soon enough."

"Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person."

"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

"A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."

"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."

"Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized."

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."

"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist."

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning."

"Force always attracts men of low morality."

"I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge..."

"The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat."

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."

"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them."

"Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?"

"I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it."

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

"Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions."

"Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous."

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

"I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."

"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."

"All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us."

"I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research."

"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler."

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

"It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs."

"How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot."

"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

"Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be."

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."

"I have just got a new theory of eternity."

"People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results."

"Information is not knowledge."

"Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population."

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

"Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood."

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."

"It is only to the individual that a soul is given."

"The faster you go, the shorter you are."

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."

"I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion."

"Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will."

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

"Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."

"I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!"

"Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations."

"The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal."

"The environment is everything that isn't me."

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.THAT'S relativity."

"To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty... this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."

"In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself."

"There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance."

"There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation."

"On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it."

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

"But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts."

"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."

"They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities."

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."

"The only real valuable thing is intuition."

"Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind."

"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."

"It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed."

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

"To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization."

"We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself."

"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either."