Albert Einstein Quotes

We [Jews] have no other means of self-defense than our solidarity

It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." So different is the meaning of the word "truth" according to whether we are dealing with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all.

I became more and more convinced that even nature could be understood as a relatively simple mathematical structure.

It is little short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not already completely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.... I believe that one could even deprive a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness if one could force it with a whip to eat continuously whether it were hungry or not.

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.

There are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being.

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.

I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason.

I must seem like an ostrich who forever burries its head in the relativistic sands in order not to face the evil quanta.

I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.

The conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semireligious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed.

The State idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with narrow-minded and economic obstacles. I believe it is bad. I have always been against it.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiousity has its own reason for existing.

It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.

Everyone likes me, yet nobody understands me.

Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable and is always daydreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interests of all if he were removed from school immediately.

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.

One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

I have survived two wars, two wives and Hitler.

So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope - we must hope - that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

My only genius talent is inquisitiveness.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. ... [By seeking] logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.

Non-cooperation in military matters should be an essential moral principle for all true scientists.

Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into Tyranny. The danger of such deterioration is more acute in a country in which the government has authority not only over the armed forces but also over every channel of education and information.

History is littered with examples of men who would become gods, but only one example of God becoming Man.

I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. Our bodies are like prisons, and I look forward to be free, but I don't speculate on what will happen to me. I live here now, and my responsibility is in this world now.

It is better to believe than to disbelieve; in doing you bring everything to the realm of possibility.

Everybody should be ashamed who uses the wonders of science and engineering without thinking and having mentally realized not more of it than a cow realizes of the botany of the plants which it eats with pleasure.

I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?

You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world that objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. ... Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one.

We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.

My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature".

Enjoying the joys of others and suffering with them-these are the best guides for man.

The woman who follows the crowd will usually believe that I said this.

I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. Bu t my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.

One ought to be ashamed to make use of the wonders of science embodied in a radio set, the while appreciating them as little as a cow appreciates the botanic marvels in the plants she munches.

To have security against atomic bombs and against the other biological weapons, we have to prevent war, for if we cannot prevent war every nation will use every means that is at their disposal; and in spite of all promises they make, they will do it. At the same time, so long as war is not prevented, all the governments of the nations have to prepare for war, and if you have to prepare for war, then you are in a state where you cannot abolish war.

I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering.

Do you really believe that the moon isn’t there when nobody looks?

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.

Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created.

We are here for the sake of others