Top 1964 Quotes & Sayings by Albert Einstein - Page 28

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.

Every age has its beautiful moments.

Academic chairs are many, but wise and noble teachers are few; lecture-rooms are numerous and large, but the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small

A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.

This subject brings me to that vilest offspring of the herd mind -- the odious militia. The man who enjoys marching in line and file to the strains of music falls below my contempt; he received his great brain by mistake -- the spinal cord would have been amply sufficient. This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism -- how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings.

I never thought that others would take my theories so much more seriously than I did.

What a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of the other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

Galileo had already made a significant beginning toward a knowledge of the law of motion. He discovered the law of inertia and the law of bodies falling freely in the gravitational field of the earth.

You cannot solve current problems with current thinking. Current problems are the result of current thinking.

Toreador pants make your feet look big too

As I look back over the truly crucial events in my life I realize that they were not planned long in advance. Albert Einstein said, 'There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.'

There is possibility in every difficulty.

I owe as much of my success to an uncompromising obstinacy as to any original ideas.

For scientific endeavor is a natural whole the parts of which mutually support one another in a way which, to be sure, no one can anticipate.

I want to know the thoughts of God. Everything else is just details.

Insofar as mathematics is true, it does not describe the real world. Insofar as it describes the real world, it is not true.

Warfare cannot be humanized.

You believe in a god that plays dice; I believe in law & order.

Of all the communities available to us, there is not one I would want to devote myself to except for the society of the true seekers, which has very few living members at any one time.

Every day, man is making bigger and better fool-proof things, and every day, nature is making bigger and better fools. So far, I think nature is winning.

I was just more stubborn and more passionate than most about physics.

May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!

Belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.

We cannot despair about mankind knowing that Mozart was a man.

If we have the courage to decide ourselves for peace we will have peace.

Solutions to tough problems should be made as simple as possible - and no simpler.

Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht. God is subtle, but he is not malicious.

The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it.

Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for the reality.

I was supposed to choose apractical profession, but this was simply unbearable to me.

What interests me most is whether God could have made the world differently.

He who has never been deceived by a lie does not know the meaning of bliss.

I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.

The war is won, but the peace is not.

[Asked about a book in which 100 Nazi professors charged him with scientific error.] Were I wrong, one professor would have been quite enough.

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god.

I have always loved solitude, a trait which tends to increase with age.

... on principle, it is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe.

The great need to grasp principles had caused me to spend most of my time on fruitless persuits.

Never let yourself be seduced by any problem, no matter how difficult.

Coincidences are God's way of staying anonymous.

When a man, after long years of searching, chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding.

Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

There have already been published by the bucketsful such brazen lies and utter fictions about me that I would long since have gone to my grave if I had allowed myself to pay attention to them.

Check out not to become a man or woman of achievement, but instead seek to become a particular person of price.

The State is made for Mankind, not mankind for the state

Strange is our situation here upon earth.

A problem defined, is a problem half solved.

Galileo - the father of modern physics - indeed of modern science.

Fantasie is belangrijker dan kennis, want kennis is begrensd.

The creative principle [of science] resides in mathematics.

If the bees disappear, man would have only four years of life left.

It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.

Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals.

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 my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. (Reading this makes me wonder how much sooner man could have walked on the moon... had we listened to a child's fantasies. It is truly a pity that so many lose their gift of imagination to the steady hum of the status quo.)

I am not a Jew in the sense that I would demand the preservation of the Jewish or any other nationality as an end in itself. Rather, I see Jewish nationality as a fact and I believe that every Jew must draw the consequences from this fact.

Everybody felt his superiority, but nobody felt oppressed by it. Though he had no illusions about people and human affairs, he was full of kindness toward everybody and everything. Never did he give the impression of domineering, always of serving and helping. He was extremely conscientious, without allowing anything to assume undue importance; a subtle humor guarded him, which was reflected in his eyes and in his smile.

The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working. One is tempted to stop and listen to it. The only thing is to turn away and go on working. Work. There is nothing else.

I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury.

It is best, it seems to me, to separate one's inner striving from one's trade as far as possible. It is not good when one's daily break is tied to God's special blessing.