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| Albert Einstein
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war.A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.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 personsnearest 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.A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others.A lie can make it half way round the world before the truth even has time to put its shoes on.A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.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. A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them.A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt about the significance of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation.A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy? A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.A theory is the more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended the range of its applicability.According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well. All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.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.All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike--and yet it is the most precious thing we have.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.All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.All the same, I leave no stone unturned and do not give up my sense of humor. . . God created the donkey and gave him a thick hide.All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them. All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.An attempt at visualizing the Fourth Dimension: Take a point, stretch it into a line, curl it into a circle, twist it into a sphere, and punch through the sphere.An empty stomach is not a good political adviser. An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way.Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction. Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.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. As long as there is man, there will be war.As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.As punishment for my contempt for authority, Fate has made me an authority myself. At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on.Before God we are equally wise and equally foolish.Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.Common sense is merely the deposit of prejudice laid down in the human mind before the age of 18.Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.Crippling of individuals (is what) I consider the worst evil of capitalism.Curiosity has its own reason for existence.Dancers are the athletes of God. Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater.Do you believe in immortality? No, and one life is enough for me.During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.Education is the progressive realization of our ignorance.Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.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.Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simplerEverything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teachFew are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own heartsFew 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.For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.For us physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion. Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.Force always attracts men of low morality.Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound. Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood. God always takes the simplest way.God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically. God does not play dice with the universe.God is clever, but not dishonest.God may be subtle, but He isn't mean.Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.He remains in many ways the foremost prophet of our time…There is no one today with Tolstoy's deep insight and moral force.He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.He who finds thought that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted great grace. He who, in addition, experiences the recognition, sympathy, and help of the best minds of his times, had been given almost more happiness than one man can bear.He who joyfully marches to music 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. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?How do I work? I grope.How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot. How long is a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on.How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people. Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.Human beings, vegetables, or comic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible playerHumanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements the inquiring constructive mind.Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation.I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - This is a somewhat new kind of
religion.I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker. The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibly invites abuse. Can anyone imagine M anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.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 am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and that without such feeling they would not be fruitful.I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.I believe in standardizing automobiles, not human beings.I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind. I believe that the first step in the setting of a real external world is the formation of the concept of bodily objects and of bodily objects of various kinds.I can't believe that God plays dice with the universe.I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty. 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 egotism.I challenged an axiom.I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field. I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it. I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed. I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.I don't believe in mathematics. I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!I feel in him a certain condescending attitude toward the reader, a
certain lack of humble devotion which, especially in great men, has
such a comforting effect.I feel uncomfortable listening to Beethoven.
I think he is too personal, almost naked.
Give me Bach, rather, and then more Bach.
I hate crowds and making speeches. I hate facing cameras and having to answer to a crossfire of questions. Why popular fancy should seize upon me, a scientist, dealing in abstract things and happy if left alone, is a manifestation of mass psychology that is beyond me.I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will
be beautiful and simple.
-I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.I have finished my task here.I have just got a new theory of eternity. I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy. I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.I live in that solitude which is painful in youth,
but delicious in the years of maturity.I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.I love to travel,
But hate to arrive.I made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification-the danger that the Germans would make them.I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research.I must seek in the stars that which was denied [to me] on earth.I never think of the future - it comes soon enoughI think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right. I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it. I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion. I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes,
and I may try to express it in words afterwards.
I want to be cremated so people won't come to worship at my bones.I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details. I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. If at first the idea is absurd, then there is no hope for it.If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber.If I had only known. I would have become a locksmith. 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.If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it. If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.If there were no newspapers here, I would live as on
a newly discovered planet. People here regard Europe
as something between a theater and a zoological garden.
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself. In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts.In the middle of difficulity lies opportunity.Information is not knowledge.Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them. Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow? It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of serviceIt is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education is a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.It is only to the individual that a soul is given. It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. It is the theory that decides what can be observed.It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid. It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful giftKeep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow -- perhaps it all will.Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.Lasting harmony with a woman (was) an undertaking in which I twice failed rather disgracefully.Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.Let every man be respected as an individual and no man be idolized. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep movingLogic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.Love is a better teacher than duty. love to travel, But hate to arriveLOVE: 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. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it.Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count.Many times a day I realize how much my own life is built on the labors of my fellowmen, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.Morality is of the highest importance--but for us, not for God.More and more I come to value charity and love of one's fellow being abive everything else. . . . All our lauded technological progress--our very civilization--is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character. Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it
as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.My house will certainly not become a place of pilgrimage, where pilgrims can come to
view the bones of the saint.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.My mind is my laboratory.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. 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.Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankindNationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort.Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. Never lose a holy curiosity. Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs. Never stop questioning.No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness
that created it.No, this trick wont work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to destroy part or all of the planet. But it is not necessary to imagine the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the growing scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is it is likely to ring destruction on a scale never before held possible, and even now hardly conceived, and that little civilization would survive it.Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious. Nothing happens until something moves.Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes -- goodwill among men and peace on earth.Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by
custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.
On the big Bang theory: "For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe."On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.One cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.One has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists. If such humility could be conveyed to everybody, the world of human activities would be more appealing.One is born into a herd of buffaloes and must be glad
if one is not trampled underfoot before one's time.One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion. Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person. Only strong characters can resist the temptation of superficial analysis.Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.Out of clutter, find simplicity.Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our agePolitics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions. Politics is more difficult than physicsPossessions, outward success, publicity, luxury -- to me these have always been contemptible. I assume that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mindProblems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created themPure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.Put all your eggs in one basket and -- WATCH THAT BASKET.Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like anhour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.THAT'S relativity. Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice. 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. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality.Remember your humanity and forget the rest.Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it. Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible.Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind. Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universeSetting an example is not the main means of influencing another; it is the only means.Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning. Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.So long as there are men there will be wars.Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. Space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind union of the two will preserve an independent reality.Strange is our Situation Here Upon Earth.Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men.Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while. The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own efforts.The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and over again, but expecting a different result. The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat. The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits. The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches.The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.The environment is everything that isn't me.The faster you go, the shorter you are.The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.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. The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.The grand aim of science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule...The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things.The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth.The important thing is not to stop questioning. 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 marvellous structure of reality.The intellect has little to do on the road to
discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness,
call it intuition or what you will, and the solution
comes to you and you don't know how or why.
-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.The led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their own leader.The legs are the wheels of creativity.The main source of all technological achievements is the divine curiosity
and playful drive of the tinkering and thoughtful researcher, as much as it
is the creative imagination of the inventor.
-The main thing is the content, not the mathematics. With mathematics,
you can prove anything.The man of science is a poor philosopher.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 meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it.The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.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.The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolically devices.The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.The only real valuable thing is intuition.The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.The only source of knowledge is experience.The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want,
drink what you don't like and do what you'd rather not.The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like and do
what you'd druther not.
The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed.The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service. The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service.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.The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder. The psychological roots of war are, in my opinion, biologically founded in the aggressive characteristics of the male creature.The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man. The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking . . . the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism. The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an inexorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says "Yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will someday experience its "No"--most theories, soon after conception.The search and striving for truth and knowledge is one of the highest of man's qualities. The search for truth is more precious than its possession. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor
in heaven.The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives. The trite objects of human efforts – possessions, outward successes, luxury – have always seemed to me contemptible. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat. The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.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. The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure 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. There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there. There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance. There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom.There remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation. There's something to be said for relatives... it has to be
said because it's unprintable.They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.This means I am opposed to the use of force under any circumstances except
when confronted by an enemy who pursues the destruction of life as an end
in itself.
Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window.To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty... this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.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.To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject.To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground. To understand the world one must not be worrying about one's self.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. True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.Truth is what stands the test of experience.Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value. Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within.Understanding of our fellow human beings...becomes fruitful only when it is sustained by sympathetic feelings in joy and sorrow.Unless the cause of peace based on law gathers behind it
the force and zeal of a religion, it hardly can hope to
succeed.
-Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant.We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are they are they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent being toward God.We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.We cannot despair of humanity, since we are ourselves human beings.We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never
know.We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. We should take care not to make intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of characterWhat a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of the other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians?What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn't realize that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and graviton have no separate existence from matter.When his wife asked him to change clothes to meet the German Ambassador: "If they want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, open my closet and show them my suits."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 my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent
my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded
how much he had learned in the last seven years.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.
When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails.When the solution is simple, God is answering.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. When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.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. When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's
only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute,
you think it's two hours. That's relativity.
-Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and ScienceWhere there is love there is no question.While it is true that an inherently free and scrupulous person may be destroyed, such an individual can never be enslaved or used as a blind tool.Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods. ~ Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involvedWisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it.With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.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. You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one. You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. You can't blame gravity for falling in love.You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it.You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it. You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. You cannot solve current problems with current thinking. Current problems are the result of current thinking.You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity. . . . No we must not. You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball.You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity...No we must not You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball.Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions. |
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Sports Quotations.
Show Business Quotations.
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