Best Motivational Albert Einstein Quotes

 

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

 

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

 

• If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

• source, simplicity, understand “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.

 

• If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.

 

• The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.

 

• Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

 

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

 

• Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will li0ve its whole life believing that it is stupid.

 

• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

• I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.

 

• Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.

 

• 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.

 

• A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.― Albert Einstein

 

• Never memorize something that you can look up.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

• I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

 

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

 

• If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

 

• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

 

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

 

• Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.

 

• A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

 

• Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

 

• If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

 

• The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

 

• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
• “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

 

• “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

 

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

 

• “Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”

 

• “God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

 

• “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”

 

• “I love Humanity but I hate humans”

 

• “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

 

• “Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.”

 

• “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”

 

• Atheism by itself is of course not a moral position or a political one of any kind, it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Naziism, that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you, and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime.

 

• Now, just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianisms, the most finished example, the most perfected one, the most ruthless and refined one, that of National Socialism, the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheists, thinkers and many others, to the United States, a country of separation of church and state, that gave them welcome, if it’s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he’s doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary system. Again, this is not a difference of emphasis between us to suggest that there’s something fascistic about me and about my beliefs is something I won't hear said and you shouldn't believe.”

 

• “When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary," he replied . "It's so seldom I have one.”

 

• “How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.”

 

• “You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

 

• I'm not saying you're more intelligent than Aristotle, or wiser. For all I know, Aristotle's the cleverest person who ever lived. That's not the point. The point is only that science is cumulative, and we live later.”

 

• “So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.”

 

• “Einstein said that if quantum mechanics were correct then the world would be crazy. Einstein was right - the world is crazy.”

 

• “I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long.

 

• If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who did have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be forgiven? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.”

 

• “Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.”

 

• “But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?”

 

• “So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.”

 

• “After all, what is art? Art is the creative process and it goes through all fields. Einstein’s theory of relativity – now that is a work of art! Einstein was more of an artist in physics than on his violin.

 

• Art is this: art is the solution of a problem which cannot be expressed explicitly until it is solved.”

 

• Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space.

 

• We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!”

 

• “Einstein’s remark on the limitlessness of human stupidity is made even more disturbing by the discovery that infinity comes in different sizes. Answering ‘How much stupider?’ or trying to measure the minimal idiocy bounded by an IQ test are mysteries which are themselves infinitely less alarming than simply attempting to tally the anti-savant population. One can count all the natural idiots (they’re the same as the even number of idiots – twice as many), but the number of real idiots continues forever: all the counting idiots (finger reckoners) plus all the fractional idiots (geniuses on a bad day) plus all the irrational idiots (they go on and on and on) add up to a world in which the approaching upper limit of our set of natural resources has its complement in the inexhaustible lower limit of our set of mental ones.”

 

• “So it is not an accident that the Nazi lads vent a particular fury against (Einstein). He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast intellectualist, individualist, super nationalist, pacifist, inky, plump... How should they know the glory of the free-ranging intellect and soft objective sympathy to whom money and violence, drink and blood and pomp, mean absolutely nothing?”

 

• “When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock.

 

• So I stopped wearing socks.”

 

• “Why should I have to hide the fact that I don't believe there’s a supreme being? There’s no proof of it. There’s no harm in saying you’re an atheist. It doesn't mean you treat people any differently. I live by the Golden Rule to do unto others, as you'd want to be treated.

 

• I just simply don't believe in religion, and I don’t believe necessarily that there’s a supreme being that watches over all of us. I follow the teachings of George Carlin. George said he worshipped the sun. He was a fellow atheist. I’m in good company … Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Charles Darwin. It’s not like I’m not with good company and intelligent people. There have been some good, intelligent atheists who have lived in the world.”

 

• “Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him.”

 

• “The highest court is in the end one’s own conscience and conviction—that goes for you and for Einstein and every other physicist—and before any science there is first of all belief.”

 

• Its to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

 

•  “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”

 

•  “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

 

•  “The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.”

 

•  “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

 

• “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

 

•  “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

 

•  “Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”

 

•  “I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”

 

•  “Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”

 

•  “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.”

 

•  “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”

 

•  “Never memorize something that you can look up.”

 

•  “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

 

•  “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

 

•  “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

• “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

 

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

 

•  “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

 

• “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”

 

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

 

• “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”

• “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

 

• “Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”

 

• “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

 

• “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

 

•  “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

 

•  “You never fail until you stop trying.”

 

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

 

•  “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”

 

•  “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”

 

•  “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

 

•  “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

 

•  “Black holes are where God divided by zero.”

 

•  “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.”

 

•  It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”

 

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

 

• “The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up.”

 

• “Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”

 

• “When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.”

 

•  “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

 

•  “What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.”

 

•  “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”

 

•  “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters”

 

•  “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.”

 

•  “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”

 

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

 

•  “We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”

 

•  “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

 

•  “If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

 

•  “Love is a better master than duty.”

 

•  “The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”

 

•  “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

 

•  “I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”

• “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
•  
•  “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”

 

•  “Time is an illusion.”

 

•  “God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.”

•  “Out of clutter, find simplicity.”

 

•  “I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.”

 

•  “Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

 

•  “Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work...”

 

•  “Nothing happens until something moves.”

 

•  “We all know that light travels faster than sound. That's why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.”

 

•  “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

 

•  “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking”

 

•  “Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”

 

•  “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

 

•  “God does not play dice with the universe.”

 

•  “A ship is always safe at the shore - but that is NOT what it is built for.”

 

•  “I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.”
•  
•  “However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”

 

•  “Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.”

 

•  “Imagination is the highest form of research.”

 

•  “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”

 

•  “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”

 

•  “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”

 

•  “What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.”

 

•  “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

 

•  “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”

 

•  “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

 

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

 

•  “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”

 

•  “Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.”

 

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

 

•  “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

 

•  “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”

 

•  “Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam?

 

• Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.”

 

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

 

•  “From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.”

 

•  “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

 

•  “I love Humanity but I hate humans”

 

•  “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”

 

•  “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

 

• “A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.”

 

•  “If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.”

 

• “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”

 

•  “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

 

•  “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”

 

•  “When the solution is simple, God is answering.”

 

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

 

•  “I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”

 

•  “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”

 

•  “I want to know God's thoughts - the rest are mere details.”

 

•  “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”

 

•  “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

 

•  “It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”

 

•  “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
•  
•  “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.”

 

•  “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.”

 

•  “Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.”

 

•  “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

 

•  “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

 

•  “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.”

 

•  “Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots”

 

•  “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”

 

•  “Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”

 

•  “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

 

•  “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”

 

•  “We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”

 

•  “The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”

 

•  “The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.”

 

•  “The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, and religious scripture a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.”

 

•  “Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.”

 

•  “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”

 

• “I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

•  “Common sense is what tells us the earth is flat.”

 

•  “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”

 

•  “The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas.”

 

•  “No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? ”

 

•  “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

 

•  “Dancers are the athletes of God.”

 

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

 

•  “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

 

•  “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 for both the body and the mind.”

 

•  “Information is not knowledge.”

 

•  “Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.”

 

•  “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

 

•  “the only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats...”

 

•  “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

 

•  “It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.”

 

•  “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

 

•  “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”

 

•  “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."

 

• Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

 

•  “I thought of that while riding my bicycle.”

 

•  “Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.”

 

•  “I see my life in terms of music.”

 

•  “Student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up.”

 

•  “The only source of knowledge is experience.”

 

•  “I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”

 

•  “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.”

 

•  “Force always attracts men of low morality.”

 

•  “It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”

•  “Past is dead, Future is uncertain ; Present is all you have, So eat, drink and live merry.”

•  “At least once a day, allow yourself the freedom to think and dream for yourself.”

•  “The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”

•  “If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.”

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

•  “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.”

•  “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”

•  “Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature. ”

•  “Play is the highest form of research.”

•  “My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude… ”

•  “A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.”

•  “We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.”

 

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

 

•  “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the World.”

 

•  “The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.”

 

•  “Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein's reply was "I don't know, why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?”

 

•  “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”

 

•  “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”

 

•  “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”