Albert Einstein - Physics and Reality [1936]

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Albert Einstein
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
Albert Einstein - The World As I See It (autobio, 1934)
The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of Jewish tradition that make me thank my stars that I belong to it.
Albert Einstein
God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.
Albert Einstein
The tragedy of life is what dies in the hearts and souls of people while they live.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.
Albert Einstein
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
Albert Einstein
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Albert Einstein - Out of My Later Years
The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.
Albert Einstein
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein - when asked to describe radio
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Albert Einstein
One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
Albert Einstein
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.
Albert Einstein
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein - quoted in Scientific American, September 2004, page 69
No one but a theorist believes his theory; everyone puts faith in a laboratory result but the experimenter himself.
Albert Einstein
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most People are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
Albert Einstein - Telegram, 24 May 1946
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Albert Einstein
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
Albert Einstein - quoted in New York Times, March 13, 1940
Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Albert Einstein
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein - on atomic energy, Jan. 22, 1947
We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.
Albert Einstein
"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary.
Albert Einstein
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Albert Einstein - "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein - (attributed)
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Albert Einstein
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Albert Einstein
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein
After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest sceintists are always artists as well.
Albert Einstein
Theories should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Albert Einstein
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein
"Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Albert Einstein
So long as there are men there will be wars.
Albert Einstein
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Albert Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... it takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Albert Einstein - (attributed)
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all art and science.
Albert Einstein - 1929
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.
Albert Einstein
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein
To my mind to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Albert Einstein
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Albert Einstein - (attributed)
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein - (attributed)
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
Albert Einstein
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
Albert Einstein
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
Albert Einstein
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein
It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel".
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein
I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.
Albert Einstein
Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Albert Einstein
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Albert Einstein
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I?m a German, and Germany will say that I?m a jew.
Albert Einstein
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein - On Education
One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
Albert Einstein
It is the theory that decides what we can observe.
Albert Einstein
When all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Albert Einstein
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Albert Einstein
It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
Albert Einstein - Observer, Jan. 15, 1950
If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein
Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Albert Einstein
Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
Albert Einstein
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein - "Autobiographical Notes"
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
Albert Einstein
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein
Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
Albert Einstein
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God
Albert Einstein
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge...
Albert Einstein
It is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.
Albert Einstein
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
Albert Einstein
So long as there are men there will be wars.
Albert Einstein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
Albert Einstein
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Albert Einstein
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist
Albert Einstein - speech
Never underestimate your own ignorance.
Albert Einstein
I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.
Albert Einstein
There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.
Albert Einstein
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein - (attributed)
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein
I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias.
Albert Einstein
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein - In a letter to Max Born, 1926
At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
Albert Einstein
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein - Letter, 24 March 1954. Quoted in "Albert Einstein: The Human Side," edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein - 1879-1955
Nothing in the world makes people so afraid as the influence of independent-minded people.
Albert Einstein
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
Albert Einstein
"I want to know Gods thoughts.... all the rest are just details
Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
Albert Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
Albert Einstein
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein - when asked to describe radio
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Albert Einstein - The World as I See It.
When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
Albert Einstein
The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.
Albert Einstein
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge...
Albert Einstein
The conscientious objector is a revoultionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.
Albert Einstein
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein - Dilip Kumar Roy, (famous Indian classical singer), had cited the above quotation of Einstein in one of his let
Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
Albert Einstein
Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the life- long attempt to acquire it.
Albert Einstein
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein
Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
Albert Einstein - Sc
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein - (attributed)
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein - (attributed)
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

- Albert Einstein - Physics and Reality [1936]