Top 1964 Quotes & Sayings by Albert Einstein - Page 9

You might as well not be alive if you're not in awe of God.

We can't solve today's problems with the mentality that created them.

[Max Planck] was one of the finest people I have ever known... but he really didn't understand physics, [because] during the eclipse of 1919 he stayed up all night to see if it would confirm the bending of light by the gravitational field. If he had really understood [general relativity], he would have gone to bed the way I did

My mind is my laboratory.

The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.

Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.

A scientist is a mimosa when he himself has made a mistake, and a roaring lion when he discovers a mistake of others.

We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is so easy to recognize a falsehood.

Keep fighting until the last buzzer sounds.

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.

A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.

Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells man his purpose in this life.

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 every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.

Time and space are not conditions of existence, time and space is a model for thinking

I wish to do something Great and Wonderful, but I must start by doing the little things like they were Great and Wonderful

A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.

I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?

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.

It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.

The effort to strive for truth has to precede all other efforts.

While I am a convinced pacifist there are circumstances in which I believe the use of force is appropriate - namely, in the face of an enemy unconditionally bent on destroying me and my people.

Private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

Given the millions of billions of Earth-like planets, life elsewhere in the Universe without a doubt, does exist. In the vastness of the Universe we are not alone.

Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perennially rejuvenated illusions.

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

Artists and creative workers - people who have accomplished work worthwhile have had a very high sense of the way to do things. They haven't been contented with mediocrity. They haven't confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others do them, but always a little better. Few are those who see with their own eyesand feel with their own hearts.

The same thinking that has led you to where you are is not going to lead you to where you want to go.

Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.

I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

Please explain the problem to me slowly, as I do not understand things quickly.

The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.

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

The value of a man resides in what he gives

Enjoying the joys of others and suffering with them-these are the best guides for man.

If you do the same thing over and over again you cannot ever expect a different outcome.

Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will.

The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.

Arrows of hate have been aimed at me too, but they have never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world with which I have no connection whatsoever.

Body and soul are not two different things, but only two different ways of perceiving the same thing. Similarly, physics and psychology are only different attempts to link our experiences together by way of systematic thought.

An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information.

Learn from yesterday, live for today.

It is abhorrent to me when a fine intelligence is paired with an unsavory character.

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it

Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay.

It would be better if you began to teach others only after you yourself have learned something.

When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Never lose a holy curiosity. Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.

No problem is ever solved in the same consciousness thas was used to create it.

With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.

Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.

The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.

I don't teach my students, I provide the circumstances in which they can learn.

The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas.

If you feed your mind as often as you feed your stomach, then you'll never have to worry about feeding your stomach or a roof over your head or clothes on your back.

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed to the empty. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury—have always seemed to me contemptible.