Einstein, Albert (Albert Einstein)

Many times a day I realize how much my own inner and outer life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.
-- Albert Einstein

It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment.
-- Albert Einstein

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.
-- Albert Einstein

Everything must be made as simple as possible but not one bit simpler.
-- Albert Einstein

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
-- Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-- Albert Einstein

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
-- Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
-- Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
-- Albert Einstein

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

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
-- Albert Einstein

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
-- Albert Einstein

Never regard study as a 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.
-- Albert Einstein

...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.
-- Albert Einstein

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
-- Albert Einstein

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
-- Albert Einstein

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
-- Albert Einstein

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
-- Albert Einstein

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
-- Albert Einstein

Knowledge is limited.
-- Albert Einstein

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
-- Albert Einstein

Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
-- Albert Einstein

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
-- Albert Einstein

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
-- Albert Einstein

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
-- Albert Einstein

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing
-- Albert Einstein

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
-- Albert Einstein

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
-- Albert Einstein

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

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.
-- Albert Einstein

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.
-- Albert Einstein

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
-- Albert Einstein

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
-- Albert Einstein

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
-- Albert Einstein

He who joyfully marches 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 suffice.
-- Albert Einstein

Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.
-- Albert Einstein

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
-- Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
-- Albert Einstein

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
-- Albert Einstein

The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. In so far as the labor contract is free what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.
-- Albert Einstein

I love to travel, but I hate to arrive.
-- Albert Einstein

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
-- Albert Einstein

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
-- Albert Einstein

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
-- Albert Einstein

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
-- Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary.
-- Albert Einstein

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
-- Albert Einstein

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
-- Albert Einstein

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
-- Albert Einstein

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an [w;oligarchy] of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). 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.
-- Albert Einstein

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an
-- Albert Einstein

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
-- Albert Einstein

The world is too dangerous to live in
-- Albert Einstein

To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject.
-- Albert Einstein

True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.
-- Albert Einstein

There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair.
-- Albert Einstein

I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies.
-- Albert Einstein

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
-- Albert Einstein

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.
-- Albert Einstein

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
-- Albert Einstein

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.
-- Albert Einstein

If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber.
-- Albert Einstein

It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary.
-- Albert Einstein

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.
-- Albert Einstein

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
-- Albert Einstein

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
-- Albert Einstein

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
-- Albert Einstein

Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
-- Albert Einstein

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
-- Albert Einstein

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world.
-- Albert Einstein

All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.
-- Albert Einstein

Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this (Gandhi), ever in flesh and blood, walked upon this earth.
-- Albert Einstein

(Nikola Tesla is) an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents... I congratulate (him) on the great successes of (his) life's work.
-- Albert Einstein

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that them had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks... Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
-- Albert Einstein

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.

-- Albert Einstein

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

-- Albert Einstein

Development of Western Science is based on two great achievements
-- Albert Einstein

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

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

-- Albert Einstein

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people
-- Albert Einstein

In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will, but not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its due place.

-- Albert Einstein

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves
-- Albert Einstein

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.

-- Albert Einstein

I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude - a feeling which increases with the years.

-- Albert Einstein

I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude...

-- Albert Einstein

My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader.

-- Albert Einstein

The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

-- Albert Einstein

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest
-- Albert Einstein

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
-- Albert Einstein

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius
-- Albert Einstein

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

Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
-- Albert Einstein

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
-- Albert Einstein

I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.
-- Albert Einstein

If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will say I am a man of the world. If it's proven wrong, France will say I am a German and Germany will say I am a Jew.
-- Albert Einstein

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
-- Albert Einstein

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
-- Albert Einstein

Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.
-- Albert Einstein

[Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications - a temptation to superficiality.
-- Albert Einstein

Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought.
-- Albert Einstein

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.
-- Albert Einstein

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
-- Albert Einstein

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
-- Albert Einstein

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.
-- Albert Einstein

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
-- Albert Einstein

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.
-- Albert Einstein

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
-- Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
-- Albert Einstein

The only real valuable thing is intuition. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.
-- Albert Einstein

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

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
-- Albert Einstein

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

The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
-- Albert Einstein

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
-- Albert Einstein

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-- Albert Einstein

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
-- Albert Einstein

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
-- Albert Einstein

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
-- Albert Einstein

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
-- Albert Einstein

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
-- Albert Einstein

Truth is what stands the test of experience.
-- Albert Einstein

Two things inspire me to awe: the starry heavens and the moral universe within.
-- Albert Einstein

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
-- Albert Einstein

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
-- Albert Einstein

What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?
-- Albert Einstein

What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.
-- Albert Einstein

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
-- Albert Einstein

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
-- Albert Einstein

If I had to live my life over again, I would live it as a trader of goods.
-- Albert Einstein

If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I'll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.
-- Albert Einstein

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
-- Albert Einstein

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.
-- Albert Einstein

The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.
-- Albert Einstein

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.
-- Albert Einstein

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
-- Albert Einstein

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
-- Albert Einstein

The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is -- insofar as it is thinkable at all -- primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research.
-- Albert Einstein

A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.
-- Albert Einstein

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

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
-- Albert Einstein

-- Albert Einstein

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

-- Albert Einstein

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

-- Albert Einstein

...creating a new thory 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, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we start 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.

-- Albert Einstein

As an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents... I congratulate you on the great successes of your life's work.
-- Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Amazon.com: Works on or about Albert Einstein
-- Albert Einstein

I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet.
-- Albert Einstein

When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.
-- Albert Einstein