It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein Quotations
We found 180 matching quotations.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
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.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.
I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.
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.
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
So long as there are men there will be wars.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the life- long attempt to acquire it.
Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
I like neither new clothes nor new kinds of food.
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.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
It is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.
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.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I?m a German, and Germany will say that I?m a jew.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
The conscientious objector is a revoultionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.
I have become rather like King Midas, except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead his eyes are closed.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
The true measure of a man is the degree to which he has managed to subjugate his ego.
Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed.
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
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.
"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.
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
"I want to know Gods thoughts.... all the rest are just details
Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.
Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary.
It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist
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.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
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.
A theory can be proved by experiment but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.
A storm broke loose in my mind.
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.
Nothing in the world makes people so afraid as the influence of independent-minded people.
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.
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.
Intellectuals solve problems geniuses prevent them.
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
No one but a theorist believes his theory; everyone puts faith in a laboratory result but the experimenter himself.
The highest destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.
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.
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.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
Never underestimate your own ignorance.
I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
God may be subtle, but He isn't mean.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
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.
I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don't have to.
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.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.
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.
Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
It is the theory that decides what we can observe.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
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.
He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel".
The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest sceintists are always artists as well.
When all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
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.
Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.
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, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
The Lord God is subtle, but malicious He is not.
Our defense is not in our armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all art and science.
It is the source of all art and science.
When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
We cannot dispair of humanity, since we are ourselves human beings.
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, 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 us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Theories should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
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.
The tragedy of life is what dies in the hearts and souls of people while they live.
The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.
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.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
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.
Bias against the Negro is the worst disease from which the society of our nation suffers.
Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
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.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of Jewish tradition that make me thank my stars that I belong to it.
My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable.
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.
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.
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.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
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.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal. Not to people or things.
I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias.
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.