Albert Einstein Quotes

As an elderly man, I have remained estranged from the society here.

Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count.

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder.

The analogy I like is this imagine being able to see the world but you are deaf, and then suddenly someone gives you the ability to hear things as well - you get an extra dimension of perception.

Discussion and argument are essential parts of science; the greatest talent is the ability to strip a theory until the simple basic idea emerges with clarity.

The genius is in making the complex simple.

I am doing just fine, considering that I have triumphantly survived Nazism and two wives.

With me every peep becomes a trumpet solo.

There is one ray of hope. It seems to me that today the responsible leaders of the several peoples have, in the main, the honest will to abolish war.

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 his feelings as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.

It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience.

It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing.

Time and space are not conditions of existence, time and space is a model for thinking

Only a very dull man spells a word the same way twice.

To invent something, all you need is imagination and a big pile of junk.

I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple

I don't believe in mathematics.

I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.

On the left-hand side of the field equation we may add the fundamental tensor guv, multiplied by a universal constant, -λ, at present unknown, without destroying the general covariance.

Is it not a terrible thing to be forced by society to do things which all of us as individuals regard as abominable crimes?

This has been done elegantly by Minkowski; but chalk is cheaper than grey matter, and we will do it as it comes.

The number of natural hypothesis that can explain any given phenomena is infinite.

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.

What I seek to accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and justice, at the risk of pleasing no one.

For an idea that does not first seem insane, there is no hope.

Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which threatens to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrades him to the level of a mechanic.

A tyranny based on ... deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself.

If you have never failed, you have never tried anything new.

Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not.

The more I study science, the more I believe in God.

...Intelligence and character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.

The normal objective of my thought affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling.

... one does people the best service by giving them some elevating work to do and thus indirectly elevating them.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.

The question that drives me hazy is whether it is I or others who is crazy.

I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice, 2) Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure.

I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book

The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.

I have always disliked the fierce competitive spirit embodied in that highly intellectual game.

The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

God Almighty does not throw dice.

The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own.

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being.

The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an exorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says "yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will some day experience its "No" - most theories, soon after conception.

Games are the most elevated form of investigation.