Albert Einstein Quotes: 141

• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

• There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

• 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.

• If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

• If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.

• Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.

• Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

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

• Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

• Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

• True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

• I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

• Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

• Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

• Love is a better teacher than duty.

• I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.

• I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

• 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.

• Never memorize something that you can look up.

• A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

• If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

• I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

• If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

• Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

• If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

• The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. 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 each day.—"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'"LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64

• Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.

• Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

• Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

• 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.

• The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

• You never fail until you stop trying.

• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

• The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

  The World As I See It

• It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.

• Creativity is intelligence having fun.

• The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

• 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.

• 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

• Black holes are where God divided by zero.

• The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up.

• Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.

• When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.

• What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.

• The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

• In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity

• Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters

• Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.

• Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

• A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

• You can't blame gravity for falling in love.

• Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

• It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

• If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

• I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.

• Love is a better master than duty.

• It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

• I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking

• Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

• God does not play dice with the universe.

  The Born-Einstein Letters 1916-55

• Imagination is the highest form of research.

• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.

• Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.

• 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.

• Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

• Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam?Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.

• Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

• If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.

• Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions."(Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)

• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

• I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.

• 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.

• If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

• The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

• One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

• The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!

• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

• We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.

• Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots

• 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.

• The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.

• The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.

• God is subtle but he is not malicious.

• No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

• Information is not knowledge.

• Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.

• Dancers are the athletes of God.

• Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.

• All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."[Moral Decay (first published 1937)]

  Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

• Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

• 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; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.

• Play is the highest form of research.

• An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

• A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.

• The human spirit must prevail over technology.

• Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as 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.

• It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.

• No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

• 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.

• Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.

• 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.

• Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

• Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.

• Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

• It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.

• I 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 anything you believe is evil.

• Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

• A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.

• One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.

• 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.

• I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

  On Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms

• The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

• As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.

• In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who says there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University, page 214)

• A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

• Curiosity is more important than knowledge.

• But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people--first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.

  Ideas and Opinions

• Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.

  Autobiographical Notes

• If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck

• If tomorrow were never to come, it would not be worth living today.

  On Humanism

• Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.

• 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.

• The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth.

• I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.

  The World As I See It

• 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 World As I See It

• 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. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry.

• Deux choses sont infinies : l’Univers et la bêtise humaine. Mais, en ce qui concerne l’Univers, je n’en ai pas encore acquis la certitude absolue.

• It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.

• Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the descernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.

• Oh juventud nunca dejes de pensar...

• Man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.

• In scientific thinking are always present elements of poetry. Science and music requires a thought homogeneous.

• I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.

• Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.

• The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

• Phantasie ist wichtiger als Wissen, denn Wissen ist begrenzt.