Einstein, Albert
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Einstein, Albert
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Einstein, Albert
Conformity
It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
Einstein, Albert
Education
Education is the progressive realization of our ignorance.
Einstein, Albert
Education
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
Einstein, Albert
Conscience
It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. We find it easier to add a new study or course or kind of school than to recognize existing conditions so as to meet the need. 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.
Einstein, Albert
Education
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.
Einstein, Albert
Communism and Socialism
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Einstein, Albert
Creativity
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Einstein, Albert
Common Sense
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.
Einstein, Albert
Concepts
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
Einstein, Albert
Death and Dying
The legs are the wheels of creativity.
Einstein, Albert
Creativity
Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
Einstein, Albert
Confusion
The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
Einstein, Albert
Class
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 everyday. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Einstein, Albert
Curiosity
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.
Einstein, Albert
Education
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.
Einstein, Albert
Cooperation
To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization.
Einstein, Albert
Courage
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Einstein, Albert
Difficulties
And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way.
Einstein, Albert
Destiny
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.
Einstein, Albert
Change
All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Einstein, Albert
Change
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. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.
Einstein, Albert
Change
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.
Einstein, Albert
Endurance
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Einstein, Albert
Cooperation
The ideas that have lighted my way and, time after time, have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
Einstein, Albert
Courage
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.
Einstein, Albert
Cooperation
Never lose a holy curiosity.
Einstein, Albert
Curiosity
Love is a better teacher than duty.
Einstein, Albert
Love
If the facts don t fit the theory, change the facts.
Einstein, Albert
Facts
You can t blame gravity for falling in love.
Einstein, Albert
Love
God does not play dice with the universe.
Einstein, Albert
God
God is clever, but not dishonest.
Einstein, Albert
God
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.
Einstein, Albert
Goals
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Einstein, Albert
Future
If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.
Einstein, Albert
Goals
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.
Einstein, Albert
Government
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
Einstein, Albert
Government
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.
Einstein, Albert
Individuality
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.
Einstein, Albert
Gratitude
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. I cannot believe that God plays dice with the world.
Einstein, Albert
God
Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love
Einstein, Albert
Love
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.
Einstein, Albert
Faith
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Einstein, Albert
Mistakes
I can t believe that God plays dice with the universe.
Einstein, Albert
Gambling
The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.
Einstein, Albert
Learning
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Einstein, Albert
Heart
The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.
Einstein, Albert
Praise
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.
Einstein, Albert
Language
During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.
Einstein, Albert
Knowledge
To the Master s honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton s ground.
Einstein, Albert
Mastery
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
Einstein, Albert
Intuition
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.
Einstein, Albert
Instinct
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.
Einstein, Albert
Influence
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth.
Einstein, Albert
Life and 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.
Einstein, Albert
Mastery
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.
Einstein, Albert
Mystery
We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself.
Einstein, Albert
Life and Living
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.
Einstein, Albert
Mathematics
We should take care not to make the intellect our god: it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Einstein, Albert
Intelligence and Intellectuals
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Einstein, Albert
Intelligence and Intellectuals
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
Einstein, Albert
Knowledge
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Einstein, Albert
Nuclear Age
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life s coming attractions.
Einstein, Albert
Imagination
To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
Einstein, Albert
Imagination
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.
Einstein, Albert
Imagination
Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.
Einstein, Albert
Intelligence and Intellectuals
The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
Einstein, Albert
Power
Your imagination is your preview of life s coming attractions.
Einstein, Albert
Imagination
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
Einstein, Albert
Imagination
In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts.
Einstein, Albert
Imagination
A human being is part of the whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Einstein, Albert
Humankind
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.
Einstein, Albert
Humankind
We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
Einstein, Albert
Humankind
It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
Einstein, Albert
Loneliness
They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.
Einstein, Albert
Ideas
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I m not sure about the universe.
Einstein, Albert
Human Nature
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.
Einstein, Albert
Mind
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.
Einstein, Albert
Nature
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.
Einstein, Albert
Methods
The environment is everything that isn t me.
Einstein, Albert
Nature
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.
Einstein, Albert
Spirit and Spirituality
Many of the things you can count, don t count. Many of the things you can t count, really count.
Einstein, Albert
Money
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
Einstein, Albert
Problems
We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant.
Einstein, Albert
Pleasure
An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.
Einstein, Albert
Politicians and Politics
Politics is far more complicated than physics.
Einstein, Albert
Politicians and Politics
The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
Einstein, Albert
Problems
The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.
Einstein, Albert
Problems
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.
Einstein, Albert
Patience
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.
Einstein, Albert
Opposition
The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military service.
Einstein, Albert
War
The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.
Einstein, Albert
Principles
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.
Einstein, Albert
Peace
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.
Einstein, Albert
Models and Modeling
Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual s instinct for self preservation.
Einstein, Albert
Survival
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.
Einstein, Albert
Opinions
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.
Einstein, Albert
Miracles
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 fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, 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.
Einstein, Albert
Music
It s not that I m so smart, it s just that I stay with problems longer.
Einstein, Albert
Perseverance
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Einstein, Albert
Past
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Einstein, Albert
Perseverance
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.
Einstein, Albert
Opinions
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Einstein, Albert
Miracles
Possessions, 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 mind
Einstein, Albert
Possessions
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Einstein, Albert
Understanding
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 that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
Einstein, Albert
Race and Racism
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Einstein, Albert
Self-esteem
It is theory that decides what can be observed.
Einstein, Albert
Theory
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Einstein, Albert
Taxes and Taxation
Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow -- perhaps it all will.
Einstein, Albert
Rewards
If we knew what we were doing it wouldn t be research.
Einstein, Albert
Research
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.
Einstein, Albert
Relativity
Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.
Einstein, Albert
Theory
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
Einstein, Albert
Simplicity
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 -- then it s longer than any hour. That s relativity!
Einstein, Albert
Time and Time Management
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
Einstein, Albert
Simplicity
If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.
Einstein, Albert
Success
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Einstein, Albert
Simplicity
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Einstein, Albert
Thoughts and Thinking
God always takes the simplest way.
Einstein, Albert
Simplicity
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Einstein, Albert
Simplicity
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.
Einstein, Albert
Relationships
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
Einstein, Albert
Right and Rightness
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.
Einstein, Albert
Simplicity
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
Einstein, Albert
Soul
This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.
Einstein, Albert
Uniqueness
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule...
Einstein, Albert
Service
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Einstein, Albert
Reality
The man of science is a poor philosopher.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
Einstein, Albert
War
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
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.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?
Einstein, Albert
Teachers and Teaching
Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Einstein, Albert
Teachers and Teaching
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.
Einstein, Albert
Truth
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
Einstein, Albert
Religion
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
Einstein, Albert
Truth
Anyone who doesn t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
Einstein, Albert
Truth
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Einstein, Albert
Truth
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
Einstein, Albert
Truth
Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.
Einstein, Albert
Service
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I m not sure about the former.
Einstein, Albert
Stupidity
Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Einstein, Albert
Technology
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.
Einstein, Albert
Theory
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Einstein, Albert
Solitude
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science
Einstein, Albert
Science and Scientists
Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
Einstein, Albert
Solitude
The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.
Einstein, Albert
America
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.
Einstein, Albert
Action
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.
Einstein, Albert
Apathy
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem -- in my opinion -- to characterize our age.
Einstein, Albert
Age and Aging
Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.
Einstein, Albert
Behavior
All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man s actions.
Einstein, Albert
Action
Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.
Einstein, Albert
Action
The only source of knowledge is experience.
Einstein, Albert
Experience
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Einstein, Albert
Conflict
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Einstein, Albert
Bargains
If one asks the whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence.
Einstein, Albert
Ask
Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occurring complexes of sense impression (partly in conjunction with sense impressions which are interpreted as signs for sense experiences of others), and we attribute to them a meaning the meaning of the bodily object.
Einstein, Albert
Experience
But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.
Einstein, Albert
Action
One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
Einstein, Albert
Acceptance
All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.
Einstein, Albert
Action
The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one s own efforts.
Einstein, Albert
Effort
How do I work? I grope.
Einstein, Albert
Work
One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.
Einstein, Albert
Weather
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.
Einstein, Albert
World
To understand the world one must not be worrying about one s self.
Einstein, Albert
World
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Einstein, Albert
Value
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.
Einstein, Albert
Visualization
Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet
Einstein, Albert
Vegetarianism
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
Einstein, Albert
Value