Albert Einstein Quotes
Most popular Albert Einstein Quotes
I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Only a life lived for others is a life worth living.
God does not play dice with the universe.
To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets.
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
The value of achievement lies in the achieving.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
I simply ignored an axiom.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
Every age has its beautiful moments.
The only source of knowledge is experience.
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe.
Before God we are all equally wise and equally foolish.
A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
The only thing that interferes with my leaning is toy education.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
Each man ought to be his own model, however frightful that may be.
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Everything is related to everything else in a space-time continuum.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
After sunset, journalists in the train. Usual daft questions as always.
In every true searcher of Nature there is a kind of religious reverence.
All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
There is only one road to true human greatness: the road through suffering.
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Ceylon is a paradise of vegetation and yet a scene of woeful human existence.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects.
Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Life is like riding a bicycle—in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.
We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits.
Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster.
If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.
It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion.
The consciousness that creates the problem cannot be the consciousness that solves it.
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence; it can only be attained through understanding.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
It's very depressing to live in a time where it's easier to break an atom than a prejudice.
The individual who has experienced solitude will not easily become a victim of mass suggestion.
The only way to escape the corruption of praise is to go on working . . . there is nothing else.
The only rational way of educating is to be an example — if one can't help it, a warning example.
He who...can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
I maintain the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
The man who regards life...as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
Curiosity is a delicate little plant which, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom.
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
It is better to Believe than to Disbelieve, in so doing you bring everything to the realm of possibility.
The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful, and then only for a short while.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
My political ideal is that of democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
We should take care not to make intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time, to please the Deity and the human race.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.
The Chinese may well supplant every other nation through their diligence, frugality, and abundance of offspring.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
The most important method of education always has consisted of that in which the pupil was urged to actual performance.
Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how I hate them!
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.
There are two ways to live your life: One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.
War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
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.
If I had my life to live over again, I would elect to be a trader of goods rather than a student of science. I think barter is a noble thing.
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty and truth.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts.
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.
No great discovery was ever made in science except by one who lifted his nose above the grindstone of details and ventured on a more comprehensive vision.
Concerns 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.
No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
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.
![It may be hard to understand them [the Japanese] psychologically, I hesitate to try ever since the Japanese singing remained so entirely incomprehensible to me. - Albert Einstein quote.](/img/q/33/53933A-it-may-be-hard-to-understand-them-japanese-psychologically-i-einstein.png)
It may be hard to understand them [the Japanese] psychologically, I hesitate to try ever since the Japanese singing remained so entirely incomprehensible to me.
I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra.
Is there not a certain satisfaction in the fact that natural limits are set to the life of the individual, so that at its conclusion it may appear as a work of art.
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 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.
Into this small university town the chaotic voices of human strife barely penetrate. I am almost ashamed to be living in such a place while all the rest struggle and suffer.
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.
Earnest respect without a trace of cynicism or even skepticism is characteristic of Japanese. Pure souls as nowhere else among people. One has to live and admire this country.
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.
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 surely suffice.
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.
At least in Japan, I prefer dealing with Japanese. They are similar to Italians in temperament, but even more refined, still entirely soaked in their artistic tradition, not nervous, full of humor.
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury — to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
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 judgement and action.
Although words exist for the most part for the transmission of ideas, there are some which produce such violent disturbance in our feelings that the role they play in transmission of ideas is lost in the background.
There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.
A hundred times a 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 measure as I have received and am still receiving.
I am now convinced that the Jewish race has maintained its purity in the last 1,500 years, as the Jews from the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris are very similar to ours. The feeling of belonging together is also quite strong.
Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Then downward to the temple wall (Wailing Wall), where obtuse ethnic brethren pray loudly, with their faces turned to the wal, bend their bodies to and fro in a swaying motion. Pitiful sight of people with a past but without a present.
All of one's contemporaries and aging friends are living in a delicate balance, and one feels that one's own consciousness is no longer as brightly lit as it once was. But then, twilight with its more subdued colors has its charms as well.
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.
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 point and its rich environment.
When a man after long years of searching chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding.
My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God.
![Two years ago I tried to appeal to Rockefeller's conscience about the absurd method of allocating grants, unfortunately without success. [Neils] Bohr has now gone to see him, in an attempt to persuade him to take some action on behalf of the exiled German scientists. - Albert Einstein quote.](/img/q/66/366A-two-years-ago-i-tried-to-appeal-rockefellers-conscience-about-einstein.png)
Two years ago I tried to appeal to Rockefeller's conscience about the absurd method of allocating grants, unfortunately without success. [Neils] Bohr has now gone to see him, in an attempt to persuade him to take some action on behalf of the exiled German scientists.
... stricken people, men and women, who beat stones daily and must heave them for five cents a day. In this way, the Chinese are severely punished for their fecundity by the insensitive economic machine. I think they hardly notice it in their obtuseness, but it is sad to see.
My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and enoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.
The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
Tour of two Jewish colonial settlements west of Jerusalem, belonging to the city. The construction is carried out by Jewish workers' cooperative, in which the leaders are elected. The workers arrive without expertise or training and achieve excellence after a short time. The leaders are paid no more than the workers.
It seems that the Japanese never thought about why it is hotter on their southern islands than on their northern islands. Nor do they seem to have become aware that the height of the sun is dependent on the north-south position. Intellectual needs of this nation seem to be weaker than their artistic ones—natural disposition.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Chinese dirty, tormented, lethargic, good-natured, stable, gentle and—healthy. All are unanimous in praising the Chinese but also in regard to his intellectual inferiority in business skills; best evidence: he earns ten times lower wages in an equivalent position, and the European can still compete successfully with him as a business employee.
Inside and outside in the terrific bustle, quite happy faces. Even those reduced to working like horses never give the impression of conscious suffering. A peculiar herd-like nation, often a respectable paunch, always sound nerves, often resembling automatons more than humans. Sometimes curiosity with grinning. With European visitors like us, comical mutual staring.
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 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, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
![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 separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest 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. - Albert Einstein quote.](/img/q/89/50589A-a-human-being-is-part-of-whole-called-by-us-einstein.png)
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 separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest 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.
The current lush flora on Hong Kong is supposed to have all been planted by the English. They have an admirable understanding of governance. The policing is carried out by imported black Indians of tremendous stature, Chinese are never used. For the latter the English have established a proper university in order to bind those Chinese who have prospered closer to them. Who can emulate them in that? Poor Continental Europeans, you don't understand how to take the bite out of nationalistic opposition movements by means of tolerance.
On the streets of the indigenous quarter one can see how these fine people spend their primitive lives. For all their fineness, they give the impression that the climate prevents them from thinking backward or forward by more than a quarter of an hour. They live in great filth and considerable stench down on the ground, do little, and need little. Simple economic cycle of life. Far too penned up to allow any distinct existence for the individual. Half-naked, they reveal their fine and yet powerful bodies and their fine, patient faces. Nowhere shouting like the Levantines in Port Said. No brutality, no market crying existence, but quiet, acquiescent drifting along, albeit not lacking in a certain lightheartedness. Once you take a proper look at these people, you can hardly take pleasure in the Europeans anymore, because they are more effete and more brutal and look so much cruder and greedier—and therein unfortunately lies their practical superiority, their ability to take on grand things and carry them out. Wouldn't we too, in this climate, become like the Indians?
This afternoon I visited the Chinese quarter on the mainland side with Elsa. Industrious, filthy, lethargic people. Houses very formulaic, balconies like beehive-cells, everything built close together and monotonous. Behind the harbor, nothing but eateries in front of which Chinese don't sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look lethargic. It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary. Yesterday evening three Portuguese middle-school teachers visited me, who claimed that the Chinese are incapable of being trained to think logically and that they specifically have no talent for mathematics. I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don't understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess that enthralls the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring.
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
The State is made for man, not man for the State.
