Unless the cause of peace based on law gathers behind it the force and zeal of a religion, it hardly can hope to succeed.

People should be more like animals . . . they should be more intuitive; they should not be too conscious of what they do while they do it.

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 feeling 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.

In my personal experience I have hardly come to know the wretchedness of mankind better than as a result of the general theory of relativity and everything connected to it. But it doesn't bother me.

Work is the only thing I do to escape the corruption of praise.

It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.

The tragedy of life is what dies in the hearts and souls of people while they live.