Time is not at all what it seems. It does not flow in only one direction, and the future exists simultaneously with the past.

In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton's laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematical methods by means of deduction.

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

I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

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.

The ordinary adult never gives a thought to space-time problems ... I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I did not begin to wonder about space and time until I was an adult. I then delved more deeply into the problem than any other adult or child would have done.

The feeling for what ought and ought not to be grows and dies like a tree, and no fertilizer of any kind will do much good. What the individual can do is give a fine example, and have the courage to firmly uphold ethical convictions in a society of cynics. I have for a long time tried to conduct myself this way, with varying success.