Albert Einstein Quotations | Page 4

X + Y + Z X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.

There's something to be said for relatives...it has to be said because it's unprintable!

A man's value to the community primarily depends on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.

I'm no more intelligent than the next guy. I'm just more curious.

I am not an atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.

Why do people speak of great men in terms of nationality? Great Germans, great Englishmen? Goethe always protested against being called a German poet. Great men are simply men and are not to be considered from the point of view of nationality, nor should the environment in which they were brought up be taken into account.

The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches.

God does not play dice [with the universe]. [Ger., Gott wurfelt nicht.]

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.

What 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.

I like neither new clothes nor new kinds of food.

The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.

This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

Time and space are not conditions of existence, time and space is a model for thinking

The genius is in making the complex simple.

The Devil craps on the big pile

The Bible is a collection of honorable, but primitive legends which are still nevertheless pretty childish.

Your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of men, and animals, and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain.

There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us and the Arab people. Despite the great wrong that has been done us, we must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people Let us recall that in former times no people lived in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs.

Princeton is a wonderful little spot. A quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts.

The important thing is to never stop questioning. Never lose a holy curiosity.

I refuse to engage in an intellectual battle with an unarmed man.

One lives one's life under constant tension, until it's time to go for good

Knowledge and ego are directly related. the less knowledge, the greater the ego

What you can't imagine, you can't discover.

I now see the necessity of a beginning.

Compounding is the 8th wonder of the world.

If I had it [life] to do all over again, I'd have been a plumber.

When I'm judging a theory, I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.

Nothing causes more consternation in a group of hypocrits than one honest man.

I have become rather like King Midas, except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus.

Thinking like we (always) have is what got us where we are. It is not going to get us where we are going.

Learn from yesterday, live for today...

[O]nly if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.

However we select from nature a complex [of phenomena] using the criterion of simplicity, in no case will its theoretical treatment turn out to be forever appropriate (sufficient).... I do not doubt that the day will come when [general relativity], too, will have to yield to another one, for reasons which at present we do not yet surmise. I believe that this process of deepening theory has no limits.

By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what on has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.

There is an atmosphere of well-sounding oratory that likes to attach itself to dress clothes. Away with it!

Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.

Galileo - the father of modern physics - indeed of modern science.

Imagination is stronger than knowledge.

Solutions to tough problems should be made as simple as possible - and no simpler.

The place of the expert is on tap not on top.

You cannot prepare for war and peace at the same time.

You imagine that I look back on my life's work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.

The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field.

Nationalism, on my opinion, is nothing more than an idealistic rationalization for militarism and aggression.

Those who believe that politics and religion do not mix, understand neither.

Show me a satisfied man, and I'll show you a failure.

Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.

I want to know the thoughts of God. Everything else is just details.

Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for the reality.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses.

I have become an obstinate heretic in the eyes of my colleagues. Momentary success carries more power of conviction than reflections upon principles.

I must seem like an ostrich who forever burries its head in the relativistic sands in order not to face the evil quanta.

We cannot despair about mankind knowing that Mozart was a man.

When I think of the most able students I have encountered in my teaching - I mean those who have distinguished themselves not only by skill but by independence of thought - then I must confess that all have had a lively interest in epistemology.

[Freud's] sense of reality is less clouded by wishful thinking than is the case with other people and [he combines] the qualities of critical judgment, earnestness and responsibility.

I know that the most joy in my life has come to me from my violin.

You can't solve problems with the same thinking that caused them.

I refuse to make money out of my science. My laurel is not for sale like so many bales of cotton.

Loving is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “You are blessed doublee if you are in love” - honeya “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

Don't second guess the mistakes you've made, others will do that for you. Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.

I'm not a genius. I'm just passionately curious.

Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience. You need experience to gain wisdom.

It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance.

There is possibility in every difficulty.

This subject brings me to that vilest offspring of the herd mind -- the odious militia. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake -- the spinal cord would have been amply sufficient. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism -- how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings.

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that three of his fingers are pointing at himself. Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater.

The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consciousness.

Live life to the fullest. You have to color outside the lines once in a while if you want to make your life a masterpiece. Laugh some every day. Keep growing, keep dreaming, keep following your heart. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Insofar as mathematics is true, it does not describe the real world. Insofar as it describes the real world, it is not true.

As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies.

Happiness, as a pursuit, is suitable only for pigs.

The stupid are invincible.

What interests me most is whether God could have made the world differently.

Logic can take you from point A to point B. Imagination can take you wherever you want

Check out not to become a man or woman of achievement, but instead seek to become a particular person of price.

When you won't be able to describe it simply just, you don't are aware of it well sufficient.

If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose interrelashionships are not accessible to our conscious thought but we are intuitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art..

Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.

Man's will, sustained by an indominable conviction, is much more powerful than material forces that seem insurmountable.

The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.

Warfare cannot be humanized.

Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience exclaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same."

You cannot solve current problems with current thinking. Current problems are the result of current thinking.

A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs.

Gradually the conviction gained recognition that all knowledge about things is exclusively a working-over of the raw material furnished by the senses. ... Galileo and Hume first upheld this principle with full clarity and decisiveness.

While you're trying to get ahead, remember to get aheart as well. When your only problem IS a nail, all you want is a decent hammer. 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.

Science is the process of making obviously erroneous ideas less obviously erroneous.

Things you can get access to, you should never memorize.

In the teaching of geography and history a sympathetic understanding (should) be fostered for the characteristics of the different peoples of the world, especially for those who we are in the habit of describing as "primitive.

Betterment of conditions the world over is not essentially dependent on scientific knowledge but on the fulfillment of human traditions and ideals.

Gravity is a response to geometry.

What physics looks for: The simplest possible system of thought which will bind together the observed facts.

One cannot learn so well as by experiencing it oneself.

I hate all the loathsome nonsense that goes with patriotism.

You believe in a God who plays dice, I in complete law and order.

Newton did not know what happened to the apple, and I can prove this when the next eclipse comes.

No problem is ever solved in the same consciousness thas was used to create it.

The State is made for Mankind, not mankind for the state