Don't wait for miracles, your whole life is a miracle.

A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.

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.

You cannot solve current problems with current thinking. Current problems are the result of current thinking.

What I'm really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all.

If one holds these high principles clearly before one's eyes, and compares them with the life and spirit of our times, then it appears glaringly that civilized mankind finds itself at present in grave danger. In the totalitarian states it is the rulers themselves who strive actually to destroy that spirit of humanity. In less threatened parts it is nationalism and intolerance, as well as the oppression of the individuals by economic means, which threaten to choke these most precious traditions.

The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field.