Albert Einstein Quotes

I am also convinced that one gains the purest joy from spirited things only when they are not tied in with earning one's livelihood.

For the most part we humans live with the false impression of security and a feeling of being at home in a seemingly familiar and trustworthily physical and human environment. But when the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we realize that we are like shipwrecked people trying to keep their balance on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whether they are drifting. But once we fully accept this, life becomes easier and there is no longer any disappointment.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

As I have said so many times, God doesn't play dice with the world.

Anyone who thinks science is trying to make human life easier or more pleasant is utterly mistaken.

One has to realize that the powerful industrial groups concerned in the manufacture of arms are doing their best in all countries to prevent the peaceful settlement of international disputes, and that rulers can achieve this great end only if they are sure of the vigorous support of the majority of their peoples.

Whatever there is of God and goodness in the universe, it must work itself out and express itself through us. We cannot stand aside and let God do it.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed.

Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent People Ignore.

When I was young, all I wanted and expected from life was to sit quietly in some corner doing my work without the public paying attention to me. And now see what has become of me.

I get the most joy in life out of music.

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

The greatest activity of which man is capable: Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty.

To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window.

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

I agree with Schopenhauer that one of the most powerful motives that attracts people to science and art is the longing to escape from everyday life.

Don't listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds.

We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. And those who have an interest in keeping the machinery of war going are a very powerful body; they will stop at nothing to make public opinion subservient to their murderous ends.

Nothing causes more consternation in a group of hypocrits than one honest man.

The Nuremberg Trial of the German war criminals was tacitly based on the recognition of the principle: criminal actions cannot be excused if committed on government orders; conscience supersedes the authority of the law of the state.

The leaves and the light are one.

I owe as much of my success to an uncompromising obstinacy as to any original ideas.

Smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company.

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms.

Capitalism creates a huge community of producers who are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor, and an oligarchy that cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized society....the subjugation is not by force but because the privileged class has long ago established a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. 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.

In living through this great epoch, it is difficult to reconcile oneself to the fact that one belongs to that mad, degenerate species that boasts of its free will. How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will. In such a place even I should be an ardent patriot!

Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience exclaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same."

When I study philosophical works I feel I am swallowing something which I don't have in my mouth.

Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.

[Max Planck] was one of the finest people I have ever known... but he really didn't understand physics, [because] during the eclipse of 1919 he stayed up all night to see if it would confirm the bending of light by the gravitational field. If he had really understood [general relativity], he would have gone to bed the way I did

The most difficult part about understanding something is that we understand it all.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world... the root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity.

Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

Warfare cannot be humanized.

The first and most important necessity is the creation of a modus vivendi with the Arab people.

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.

The future is not a gift-it is an achievement.

Thinking is to man what flying is to birds. Don’t follow the example of a chicken when you could be a lark.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.

The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

It is intelligent to have a plan, but neurotic to fall in love with it.