Top 1964 Quotes & Sayings by Albert Einstein - Page 10

The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.

The future is of greater interest to me than the past, since that is where I intend to spend the rest of my life.

"There's been a quantum leap technologically in our age, but unless there's another quantum leap in human relations, unless we learn to live in a new way towards one another, there will be a catastrophe."

I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.

Imagination without knowledge may create beautiful things, knowledge without imagination can create only perfect ones.

Necessity is the mother of all invention.

The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see.

Time is an illusion.

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.

There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. What the individual can do is to give a fine example, and to have the courage to uphold ethical values .. in a society of cynics.

America is a democracy and has no Hitler, but I am afraid for her future; there are hard times ahead for the American people, troubles will be coming from within and without. America cannot smile away their Negro problem nor Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are cosmic laws.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals.

Am I, or the others crazy?

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

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.

In any conflict between humanity and technology, humanity will win.

True knowledge comes with deep understanding of a topic and its inner workings.

Don't become a seeker of success. Become a person of value.

Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as 'conceptual necessities,' etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.

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

Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.

Playfullness is the essential feature of productive thought.

The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.

The chicken did not cross the road. The road passed beneath the chicken.

I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or State, to my circle of friends or even to my own family... Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it,to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.

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 Universe is stranger than we imagine!

Nothing happens until something moves. When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected.

It's not that life has been easy, perfect or exactly as expected. I just choose to be happy and grateful no matter how it all turns out. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Politics is more difficult than physics.

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.

Genius is when an idea and the execution of that idea are simultaneous.

The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?

Experts are just trained dogs.

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.

Don't dream of being a good person, be a human being is valuable and gives value to life.

The world we have created is a product of our thinking.

The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.

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.

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

Games are the most elevated form of investigation.

Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children.

Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss.

Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition.

Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created.

I learned many years ago never to waste time trying to convince my colleagues.

Conceptions without experience are void; experience without conceptions is blind.

When a man is sufficiently motivated, discipline will take care of itself.

I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder.

It is not a lack of real affection that scares me away again and again from marriage. Is it a fear of the comfortable life, of nice furniture, of dishonor that I burden myself with, or even the fear of becoming a contented bourgeois.

Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations.

In a sailboat I become oblivious to everything else in the world.

I have tried 99 times and have failed, but on the 100th time came success.

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 the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.

Only the one who does not question is safe from making a mistake.