Top 1964 Quotes & Sayings by Albert Einstein - Page 29

When I'm judging a theory, I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.

There has been an earth for a little more than a billion years. As for the question of the end of it I advise: Wait and see!

The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.

An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion. But one must avoid the prejudice that regards the religions of primitive peoples as pure fear religions and those of the civilized races as pure moral religions. All are mixed forms, though the moral element predominates in the higher levels of social life. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of the idea of God.

I want to know all God's thoughts.

The most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile.

I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

The woman who follows the crowd will usually believe that I said this.

The Universe is a friendly place.

The best that Gauss has given us was likewise an exclusive production. If he had not created his geometry of surfaces, which served Riemann as a basis, it is scarcely conceivable that anyone else would have discovered it. I do not hesitate to confess that to a certain extent a similar pleasure may be found by absorbing ourselves in questions of pure geometry.

To see with one's own eyes, to feel and judge without succumbing to the suggestive power of the fashion of the day, to be able to express what one has seen and felt in a snappy sentence or even in a cunningly wrought word - is that not glorious? Is it not a proper subject for congregation?

My scientific work is motivated by an irresistible longing to understand the secrets of nature not by other feelings.

The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously.

If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self... so the hell with it... I will continue to be unconcerned about it, which surely has the advantage that I'm left in peace by many a fop who would otherwise come to see me.

Unless the cause of peace based on law gathers behind it the force and zeal of a religion, it hardly can hope to succeed.

A priori one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way... The kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation...is wholly different. Even if the axioms of the theory are proposed by man, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world.... That is the "miracle" which is being constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.

A human being is part of a whole called by us the universe.

The State idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with narrow-minded and economic obstacles. I believe it is bad. I have always been against it.

If I were wrong, wouldn't one be enough?

Just as with the man in the fairy tale who turned whatever he touched into gold, with me everything is turned into newspaper clamor.

No one but a theorist believes his theory; everyone puts faith in a laboratory result but the experimenter himself.

The ancients knew something, which we seem to have forgotten.

One ought to be ashamed to make use of the wonders of science embodied in a radio set, the while appreciating them as little as a cow appreciates the botanic marvels in the plants she munches.

Princeton is a wonderful little spot. A quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts.

No matter how we may single out a complex from nature...its theoretical treatment will never prove to be ultimately conclusive... I believe that this process of deepening of theory has no limits.

That's my mathematician who examines problems which I put before him and checks their validity. You see, I am not myself a good mathematician.

At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on.

For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have any hold on him.

Who would have thought around 1900 that in fifty years time we would know so much more and understand so much less.

The question that drives me hazy is whether it is I or others who is crazy.

On quantum theory I use up more brain grease (rough translation of German idiom) than on relativity.

I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.

The scientist finds his reward in what Henri Poincare calls the joy of comprehension, and not in the possibility of application to which any discovery may lead.

Thinking like we (always) have is what got us where we are. It is not going to get us where we are going.

To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization.

[Misquotation; not by Einstein.] If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. [Apparently remorseful for his role in the development of the atom bomb.]

the contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation

The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working.

It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.

I have always disliked the fierce competitive spirit embodied in that highly intellectual game.

In conclusion I wish to say that in working at the problem here dealt with I have had the loyal assistance of my friend and colleague M. Besso, and that I am indebted to him for several valuable suggestions.

People will not disarm step by step; they will disarm at one blow or not at all.

Since others have explained my theory, I can no longer understand it myself.

Dear Posterity, If you have not become more just, more peaceful, and in general more sensible... then may the Devil take you!

Well, I have considered myself to be very fortunate in that I have been able to do mostly only that which my inner self told me to do... I am also aware that I do receive much criticism from the outside world for what I do and some people actually get angry at me. But this does not really touch me because I feel that these people do not live in he same world as do I.

It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." So different is the meaning of the word "truth" according to whether we are dealing with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all.

I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious. Told to Valentine Bargmann.

As long as there will be a man, there will be wars.

To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets

The idea of achieving security through national armament is, at the present state of military technique, a disastrous illusion.

You accept the historical Jesus?

Hell! there ain't no rules around here! We are tryin' to accomplish somep'n!

I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Make a lot of walks to get healthy and don't read that much but save yourself some until you're grown up.

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else unless it is an enemy.

It may affront the military-minded person to suggest a regime that does not maintain any military secrets.

Let me tell you what I look like: pale face, long hair, and a tiny start of a paunch. In addition, an awkward gait, and a cigar in the mouth and a pen in pocket or hand.

The next world war will be fought with stones.

To one bent on age, death will come as a release. I feel this quite strongly now that I have grown old myself and have come to regard death like an old debt, at long last to be discharged.