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.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

One must shy away from questionable undertakings, even when they bear a high-sounding name.

One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.

If God has created the world, his primary worry was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us

It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction in the name of which they can hate one another. Once it was religion. Now it is the State.

Man's will, sustained by an indominable conviction, is much more powerful than material forces that seem insurmountable.