Albert Einstein Quotes

Growth comes through analogy; through seeing how things connect, rather than only seeing how they might be different.

If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.

The beauty of it is that we have to content ourselves with the recognition of the miracle, beyond which there is no legitimate way out.

That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.

My primary process of perceiving is muscular and visual.

Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance

Politics is more difficult than physics.

The creative scientist studies nature with the rapt gaze of the lover, and is guided as often by aesthetics as by rational considerations in guessing how nature works.

The trouble with the younger generation is that they don't stay young for very long.

The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously.

The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler

Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality.

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

I asked myself childish questions and proceeded to answer them.

My scientific work is motivated by an irresistible longing to understand the secrets of nature not by other feelings.

But could not our situation be compared to one of a menacing epidemic? People are unable to view this situation in its true light, for their eyes are blinded by passion. General fear and anxiety create hatred and aggressiveness. The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and persecuted as unpatriotic.

I have lived to prove Thoreau's contention that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher"(when asked about completing his income tax form)

When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this: In our life together, it was decided I would make all of the big decisions and my wife would make all of the little decisions. For fifty years, we have held true to that agreement. I believe that is the reason for the success in our marriage. However, the strange thing is that in fifty years, there hasn’t been one big decision.

Numerous are the academic professors, but rare are wise and noble teachers.

Knowledge is dead; the school, however, serves the living.

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.

Most people go on living their everyday life: half-frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragic-comedy that is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world.

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.

Hell! there ain't no rules around here! We are tryin' to accomplish somep'n!

...and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man - though often it is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

One who scorns the power of intuition will never rise above the ranks of journeyman calculator.

The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening

Since that deluge of newspaper articles I have been so flooded with questions, invitations, suggestions, that I keep dreaming I am roasting in Hell, and the mailman is the devil eternally yelling at me, showering me with more bundles of letters at my head because I have not answered the old ones.

Persistence is the most powerful force on earth, it can move mountains.

We cannot get to where we dream of being tomorrow unless we change our thinking today.

If there is no price to be paid, it is also not of value.

One cannot learn so well as by experiencing it oneself.

Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience. You need experience to gain wisdom.

Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?

In the past it never occurred to me that every casual remark of mine would be snatched up and recorded. Otherwise I would have crept further into my shell.

When I think of the most able students I have encountered in my teaching - I mean those who have distinguished themselves not only by skill but by independence of thought - then I must confess that all have had a lively interest in epistemology.

The greatest scientists are artists as well.

Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster.

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will...Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.

The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.

Stupidity is a personal achievement which transcends national boundaries.

Human beings can attain a worthy and harmonious life only if they are able to rid themselves, within the limits of human nature, of the striving for the wish fulfillment of material kinds. The goal is to raise the spiritual values of society.

Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen.

... it is a welcome symptom in an age which is commonly denounced as materialistic, that it makes heroes of men whose goals lie wholly in the intellectual and moral sphere.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

The music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it - that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed.