I never thought that others would take my theories so much more seriously than I did.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

When the Special Theory of Relativity began to germinate in me, I was visited by all sorts of nervous conflicts... I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots

One cannot deal with a problem with the same thinking that creates it.

Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. 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.