Albert Einstein

Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.

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.

I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. I believe in the latter.

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.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

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 searchers, which has very few living members at any time.

How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot.

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

Since that deluge of newspaper articles I have been so flooded with questions, invitations, suggestions, that I keep dreaming I am roasting in Hell, and the mailman is the devil eternally yelling at me, showering me with more bundles of letters at my head because I have not answered the old ones.

I have become rather like King Midas, except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus.

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.

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the Earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored.

(Atlantic Monthly, November 1945)

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

(Letter to Max Brod, 22 February 1949)

Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me?

(New York Times, 12 March 1944)

The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to enhance all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. 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 every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

In light of knowledge attained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alterations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light – only those who have experienced it can understand it.

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

For the creation of a theory the mere collection of recorded phenomena never suffices – there must always be added a free invention of the human mind that attacks the heart of the matter.

(Albert Einstein: The human side, new glimpses from his archives)

I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.

(Albert Einstein, Michele Besso: Correspondance 1903-1955) 

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.

(The Saturday Evening Post, 26 October 1929)

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.

(Letter to I.M. Cohen, quoted in New York World-Telegram, 19 March 1940)

Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.

(The evolution of physics)

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

(Preface in: Max Planck, Where is science going?)

What I am really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all.

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different of the religiosity of someone more naive.

(Albert Einstein: The human side, new glimpses from his archives)

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing dice.

(The Born-Einstein Letters)

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

(Inscription in Fine Hall, Princeton University)

As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

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

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent 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.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

(Cosmic Religion)

In so far as the statements of geometry speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality.

(Geometry and Experience)

How wretchedfully inadequate is the theoretical physicist as he stands before Nature – and before his students.

(Albert Einstein: The human side, new glimpses from his archives)

What I see in Nature is a magnificant structure that we can comprehend only imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of ‘humility’. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism

(Albert Einstein: The human side, new glimpses from his archives)

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Thinking for its own sake, as in music! When I have no special problem to occupy my mind, I love to reconstruct proofs of mathematical and physical theorems that have long been known to me. There is no goal in this, merely an opportunity to indulge in the pleasant occupation of thinking.

(Albert Einstein: The human side, new glimpses from his archives)

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.

Why does this magnificent applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us little happiness? The simple answer runs: because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.

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

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

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

The state exists for man, not man for the state. The same may be said of science. These are old phrases, coined by people who saw in human individuality the highest human value. I would hesitate to repeat them, were it not for the ever recurring danger that they may be forgotten, especially in these days of organization and stereotypes.

All our thoughts and concepts are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only in reference to these sense-experiences. On the other hand, however, they are products of the spontaneous activity of our minds; they are thus in no wise logical consequences of the contents of these sense-experiences. If, therefore, we wish to grasp the essence of a complex of abstract notions we must for the one part investigate the mutual relationships between the concepts and the assertions made about them; for the other, we must investigate how they are related to the experiences.

(Space-Time, article for Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1926)

Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.

There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation.

It is the theory that decides what we can observe.

If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.

In error are those theorists, who believe that theory comes inductively from experience.

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what on has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.

The physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for he himself knows best and feels most surely where the shoe pinches.... he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified... The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

(Ideas and Opinions)

One may say ‘the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility’.

(Ideas and Opinions)

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.

(Ideas and Opinions)

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.

(What I Believe)

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

(Out of my later years)

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

(Out of my later years)

The great aim of science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

(Life, 9 January 1950)

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

(The evolution of physics)

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

(The evolution of physics)

In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears the ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.

(The evolution of physics)

If A equal success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.

Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the former.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

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

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

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

I don’t know how man will fight World War III, but I do know how they will fight World War IV; with sticks and stones.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

The highest destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; 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.

It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.

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

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

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 individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’s relativity.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.

(What I Believe)