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.
Albert Quotations
We found 290 matching quotations.
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.
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.
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
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.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
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 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.
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don't have to.
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.
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
How many crimes are committed simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.
Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.
Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.
He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
People and things do not upset us, rather we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Religion is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance.
Intellectuals solve problems geniuses prevent them.
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
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.
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal. Not to people or things.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
The truth, as the light, makes blind.
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.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
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.
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
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.
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.
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist
The highest destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
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.
Bias against the Negro is the worst disease from which the society of our nation suffers.
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now--always.
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 tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives
I like neither new clothes nor new kinds of food.
The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence cynicism.
The Lord God is subtle, but malicious He is not.
You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
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.
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.
Many a man wishes he were strong enough to tear a telephone book in half-especially if he has a teenage daughter.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always and indeed then most truly when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances.
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
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.
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 duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
It's better to be known by six people for something you're proud of than to be known by sixty million for something you're not.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always.
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me
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.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
A storm broke loose in my mind.
Columbus dreamed of an unknown shore at the rim of a far flung sky.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.
God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.
The need to be right -- the sign of a vulgar mind.
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.
He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Science is to see what everyone else has seen but think what no one else has thought.
If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
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.
There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.
Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.
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.
Everything actual must also first have been possible, before having actual existence.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
A theory can be proved by experiment but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.
Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen.
The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.
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.
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.
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.
In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.
It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
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.
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
You know what charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
So long as there are men there will be wars.
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.
The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else he can blame it on.
The measuring rod of a civilization is the prosperity of the masses.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy shares. I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved my soul.
It is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.
The African is my brother-but he is my younger brother by several centuries.
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Our defense is not in our armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
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.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the life- long attempt to acquire it.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
I have become rather like King Midas, except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus.
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.
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
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.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
A Human Thought is an actual Existence, and a Force and Power, capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well as mind.
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.
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.
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
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.
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.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
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.
In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current... Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success.
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
"I want to know Gods thoughts.... all the rest are just details
Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
Hell must be isothermal; for otherwise the resident engineers and physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired temperature.
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
the tragedy of life is not that we die, but is rather, what dies inside a man while he lives.
I love my country too much to be a nationalist.
Big nations are like chickens. They like to make big noises, but very often it is no more than squabbling.
Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.
It matters not what goal you seek Its secret here reposes You've got to dig from week to week To get Results or Roses.
Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present.
Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint.
Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Grow into your ideals so that life cannot rob you of them.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.
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.
The true measure of a man is the degree to which he has managed to subjugate his ego.
An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight. . . The truly wise person is colorblind.
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.
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.
Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.
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.
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
'It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.
Never underestimate your own ignorance.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead his eyes are closed.
A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
In the depth of winter, I learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
It is the theory that decides what we can observe.
A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to bet better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.
The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Reverence for life brings us into a spiritual relation with the world which is independent of all knowledge of the universe.
Integrity has no need of rules.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.
A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts as the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of the reason of which we so much boast.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
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 eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human call and the unreasonable silence of the world.
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.
Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.
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.
We cannot dispair of humanity, since we are ourselves human beings.
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.
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.
Theories should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable.
The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence.
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.
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
As we acquire more knowldege, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
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.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.
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.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Don't walk behind me I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Nothing in the world makes people so afraid as the influence of independent-minded people.
One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
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.
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.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.
Live to the point of tears.
Example is not the main thing in influencing others it's the only thing.
"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.
When all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
A slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.
The spirit of the age is filled with the disdain for thinking.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.
At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
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.
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself.
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.
Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
No one but a theorist believes his theory; everyone puts faith in a laboratory result but the experimenter himself.
What is a rebel A man who says no.
God may be subtle, but He isn't mean.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
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.
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
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.
The tragedy of life is what dies in the hearts and souls of people while they live.
"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.