Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.

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

I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential.

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

The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge.