Albert Einstein (1879-1955), a German physicist, one of the greatest scientists, is known for his well known Theory of Relativity. Here below are some selected and famous quotes by him:
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”
“The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.”
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.”
"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."
“Force always attracts men of low morality.”
“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.”
“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 suffice.”
“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
“We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."
“True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.”
“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”
“True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!”
“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
“The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.”
“The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.”
“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.”
“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
“The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.”
“I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.”
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Albert Einstein”
“Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.”
“I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.”
“Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.”
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.”
“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.”
“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.”
‘Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.”
“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.”
“Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.”
“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.”
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
“In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.”
“One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.”
“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”
“I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.”
“Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.”
“Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
“Never lose a holy curiosity.”
“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
“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.”
“Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”
“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
“Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.”
“Love is a better teacher than duty.”
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
“I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.”
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
“Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.”
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.”
“It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer.”
“It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.”
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”
“I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”
“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.”
“It is only to the individual that a soul is given.”
“It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.”
“I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.”
“Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”
“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.”
“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
“Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.”
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
“Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.”
“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.”
“Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.”
“An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.”
“All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.”
“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.”
“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”
“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.”
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
“Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
“The world we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them.”
“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slightest details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.”
“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”
“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received.”
“Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything learned in school.”
“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”
“The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler.”
"Great spirits have always encountered violent 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."
“Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.”
“When I was still a rather precocious young man, I already realized most vividly the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives.”
“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”
“The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”
“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 feelings as something separated from the rest 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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
“The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things.”
“God is subtle, but he is not malicious.”
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
“The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own efforts.”
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it."
"Never regard your 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 job and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."
"If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things."
"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist."
"The search for truth 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."
"Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
"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 true value of a human being is determined primarily by how he has attained liberation from the self."
"A scientist is a mimosa when he himself has made a mistake and a roaring lion when he discovers a mistake of others."
"I have remained a simple fellow who asks nothing of the world; only my youth is gone - the enchanting youth that forever walks on air."
"It is not so important where one settles down. The best thing is to follow your instincts without too much reflection."
"Good acts are like good poems. One may easily get their drift, but they are not rationally understood."
"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."
"Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit...not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil."
"It would be better if you begin to teach others only after you yourself have learned something."
"The most important endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity for life"
"A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future."
"I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know if I am.
"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
“I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.”
“Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.”
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.”
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
