Albert Einstein - Quotes 1-412
E=mc²
Albert Einstein
Conviction is a good motive, but a bad judge.
Albert Einstein
For a scientist, altering your doctrines when the facts change is not a sign of weakness.
Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
Albert Einstein
Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
Albert Einstein
If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then is an empty desk a sign?
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 value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.
Albert Einstein
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Albert Einstein
It's not that I'm so smart, I just stick with problems longer.
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
The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein
Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.
Albert Einstein
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein
If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.
Albert Einstein
I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.
Albert Einstein
Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein
Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
Albert Einstein
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
Albert Einstein
Intelligent life on other planets? I'm not even sure there is on earth!
Albert Einstein
Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.
Albert Einstein
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Albert Einstein
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
Albert Einstein
Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.
Albert Einstein
Light is faster than sound... that is why a person looks bright until he speaks.
Albert Einstein
There are two important things for full success in life:
1. Don´t tell everything you know.
Albert Einstein
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
Albert Einstein
Never memorize something that you can look up.
Albert Einstein
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein
The distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, but a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is never to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
Albert Einstein
If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
Albert Einstein
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
Albert Einstein
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Albert Einstein
You never fail until you stop trying.
Albert Einstein
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
Albert Einstein
The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up.
Albert Einstein
The woman who follows the crowd will usually believe that I said this.
Albert Einstein
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein
If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.
Albert Einstein
I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today - and even professional scientists - seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is - in my opinion - the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.
Albert Einstein
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
Albert Einstein
Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.
Albert Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force. It must be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.
Albert Einstein
Creativity is intelligence having fun.
Albert Einstein
When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.
Albert Einstein
Love is a better master than duty.
Albert Einstein
Any fool can know. The point is to understand.
Albert Einstein
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
Albert Einstein
No man or Genie on earth had 'created' anything, we merely assembled God's Atoms, by learning it's properties, with his aid, so if anyone said that we had 'invented' anything - he had invented a lie; an unwise man... thinks we have created an atom.
Albert Einstein
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
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 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
I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.
Albert Einstein
What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.
Albert Einstein
Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
Albert Einstein
Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
Nothing happens until something moves.
Albert Einstein
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein
I never worry about the future. It comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein
Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert Einstein
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Albert Einstein
If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.
Albert Einstein
The state was made for man, not man for state.
Albert Einstein
God does not play dice with the universe.
Albert Einstein
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.
Albert Einstein
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
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
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Albert Einstein
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Albert Einstein
Time is an illusion.
Albert Einstein
God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.
Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Albert Einstein
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
Albert Einstein
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Albert Einstein
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Albert Einstein
Genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work.
Albert Einstein
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein
It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
Albert Einstein
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Albert Einstein
The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.
Albert Einstein
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.
Albert Einstein
An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion soon degenerates. For force always attract men of low morality.
Albert Einstein
A ship is always safe at the shore - but that is not what it is built for.
Albert Einstein
I am thankful to all those who said no. It's because of them, I did it myself.
Albert Einstein
Creativity is the residue of time wasted.
Albert Einstein
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. 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 any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
Albert Einstein
Everyday is an oportunity to make a new happy ending.
Albert Einstein
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of time, art and true science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.
Albert Einstein
What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.
Albert Einstein
A man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal.
Albert Einstein
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein
Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots.
Albert Einstein
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
Albert Einstein
I want to know God's thoughts - the rest are mere details.
Albert Einstein
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
Albert Einstein
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
Albert Einstein
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
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
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
Albert Einstein
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Albert Einstein
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
Albert Einstein
The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, and religious scripture a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.
Albert Einstein
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
Albert Einstein
Keep fighting until the last buzzer sounds.
Albert Einstein
It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
Albert Einstein
God is subtle but he is not malicious.
Albert Einstein
There is far too great a disproportion between what one is and what others think one is, or at least what they say they think one is.
Albert Einstein
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
Albert Einstein
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
Albert Einstein
For rebelling against every form of authority fate has punished me by making me an authority.
Albert Einstein
From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner 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
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
Albert Einstein
I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.
Albert Einstein
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.
Albert Einstein
If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.
Albert Einstein
I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.
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
Imagination is the highest form of research.
Albert Einstein
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.
Albert Einstein
I thought of that while riding my bicycle.
Albert Einstein
Dancers are the athletes of God.
Albert Einstein
Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.
Albert Einstein
The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas.
Albert Einstein
Every one 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 from the religiosity of someone more naive.
Albert Einstein
When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
Albert Einstein
The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
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
I believe in intuitions and inspirations... I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am.
Albert Einstein
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Albert Einstein
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.
Albert Einstein
Unthinking repect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.
Albert Einstein
Force always attracts men of low morality.
Albert Einstein
Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.
Albert Einstein
Common sense is what tells us the earth is flat.
Albert Einstein
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
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
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; 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
The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!
Albert Einstein
You can believe nothing or everything is a miracle. I believe everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.
Albert Einstein
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.
Albert Einstein
A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.
Albert Einstein
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
Albert Einstein
If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.
Albert Einstein
God always takes the simplest way.
Albert Einstein
No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
Albert Einstein
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the World.
Albert Einstein
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
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
A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.
Albert Einstein
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Albert Einstein
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
Albert Einstein
I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
Albert Einstein
Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.
Albert Einstein
I love Humanity but I hate humans.
Albert Einstein
The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.
Albert Einstein
I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
Albert Einstein
I see my life in terms of music.
Albert Einstein
If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein
The only source of knowledge is experience.
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
We are all life trying to live, among other life trying to live.
Albert Einstein
I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.
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
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein
A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very 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
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. 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
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
Albert Einstein
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Albert Einstein
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein
Live as if you were to die tommorow; dream as if you were to live forever.
Albert Einstein
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Albert Einstein
I am not more gifted than the average human being. If you know anything about history, you would know that is so - what hard times I had in studying and the fact that I do not have a memory like some other people do… I am just more curious than the average person and I will not give up on a problem until I have found the proper solution. This is one of my greatest satisfactions in life - solving problems - and the harder they are, the more satisfaction do I get out of them. Maybe you could consider me a bit more patient in continuing with my problem than is the average human being. Now, if you understand what I have just told you, you see that it is not a matter of being more gifted but a matter of being more curious and maybe more patient until you solve a problem.
Albert Einstein
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
Albert Einstein
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Albert Einstein
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 points 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.
Albert Einstein
Life is a mystery, not a problem waiting to be solved.
Albert Einstein
The strongest force in the universe is compound interest.
Albert Einstein
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
Albert Einstein
Student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up.
Albert Einstein
The human spirit must prevail over technology.
Albert Einstein
If I could do it all again, I'd be a plumber.
Albert Einstein
A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
Albert Einstein
My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.
Albert Einstein
Everyone must become their own person, however frightful that may be.
Albert Einstein
At least once a day, allow yourself the freedom to think and dream for yourself.
Albert Einstein
Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Albert Einstein
Our separation from each other is an optical illusion.
Albert Einstein
Excellence is doing a common thing in an uncommon way.
Albert Einstein
The most amazing thing about the world is that we understand it.
Albert Einstein
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Albert Einstein
It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists (Jews) do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews.
Albert Einstein
We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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.
Albert Einstein
Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.
Albert Einstein
Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it.
Albert Einstein
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.
Albert Einstein
Older men start wars, but younger men fight them.
Albert Einstein
The most important question a person can ask is, 'Is the Universe a friendly place?'
Albert Einstein
The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.
Albert Einstein
To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.
Albert Einstein
Pure mathematics is in its way the poetry of logical ideas.
Albert Einstein
I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.
Albert Einstein
Always do what's right; this will gratify some and astonish the rest.
Albert Einstein
How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will. In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot.
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 prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
Albert Einstein
All generalizations are false, including this one.
Albert Einstein
I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.
Albert Einstein
There is nothing known as 'Perfect.' It's only those imperfections which we choose not to see.
Albert Einstein
As the area of light expands, so does the perimeter of darkness.
Albert Einstein
If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.
Albert Einstein
Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.
Albert Einstein
A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.
Albert Einstein
I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
Albert Einstein
Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.
Albert Einstein
I do not teach anyone I only provide the environment in which they can learn.
Albert Einstein
Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.
Albert Einstein
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Albert Einstein
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
Albert Einstein
Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
Albert Einstein
The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.
Albert Einstein
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
Albert Einstein
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
Albert Einstein
I don't pretend to understand the universe - it's much bigger than I am.
Albert Einstein
The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.
Albert Einstein
I asked myself childish questions and proceeded to answer them.
Albert Einstein
You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.
Albert Einstein
Play is the highest form of research.
Albert Einstein
I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.
Albert Einstein
To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.
Albert Einstein
Striving for social justice is the most valuable thing to do in life.
Albert Einstein
The man with the greatest soul will always face the greatest war with the low minded person.
Albert Einstein
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
Albert Einstein
We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we are born.
Albert Einstein
It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing.
Albert Einstein
Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.
Albert Einstein
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.
Albert Einstein
No one does anything right in life, until they realize that they are making a mistake.
Albert Einstein
A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.
Albert Einstein
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Albert Einstein
This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher.
(When asked about completing his income tax form)
Albert Einstein
The scientists' religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
Albert Einstein
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
Albert Einstein
Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.
Albert Einstein
I have reached an age where if someone tells me to wear socks, I dont have to.
Albert Einstein
Subtle is the Lord. Malicious, He is not.
Albert Einstein
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.
Albert Einstein
Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay.
Albert Einstein
Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
Albert Einstein
Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children.
Albert Einstein
In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who says there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.
Albert Einstein
What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.
Albert Einstein
When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.
Albert Einstein
People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
Albert Einstein
It is humankind's duty to respect all life, not only animals have feelings but even also trees and plants.
Albert Einstein
Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.
Albert Einstein
Failing isn't bad when you learn what not to do.
Albert Einstein
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
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
Do you really believe that the moon isn't there when nobody looks?
Albert Einstein
Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.
Albert Einstein
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that 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 empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts - possessions, outward success, luxury - have always seemed to me contemptible.
Albert Einstein
Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.
Albert Einstein
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Albert Einstein
Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.
Albert Einstein
Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.
Albert Einstein
Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll.... It does not mean that everything in life is relative.
Albert Einstein
I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.
Albert Einstein
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
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
Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in Nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole.
Albert Einstein
The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a simple datum of experience.
Albert Einstein
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor.... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein
Children don't heed the life experiences of their parents, and nations ignore history. Bad lessons always have to be learned anew.
Albert Einstein
I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work.
Albert Einstein
Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein
Is it not better for a man to die for a cause in which he believes, such as peace, than to suffer for a cause in which he does not believe, such as war?
Albert Einstein
True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.
Albert Einstein
So long as there are men, there will be wars.
Albert Einstein
Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us.
Albert Einstein
The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.
Albert Einstein
If tomorrow were never to come, it would not be worth living today.
Albert Einstein
Growth comes through analogy; through seeing how things connect, rather than only seeing how they might be different.
Albert Einstein
Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.
Albert Einstein
The future is not a gift - it is an achievement.
Albert Einstein
The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth.
Albert Einstein
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.
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
There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair.
Albert Einstein
Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.
Albert Einstein
The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political 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
Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.
Albert Einstein
I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
Albert Einstein
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.
Albert Einstein
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
Albert Einstein
Why is it that no one understands me and everybody likes me?
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
The idea of a personal god is quite alien to me and seems even naive.
Albert Einstein
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Albert Einstein
I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.
Albert Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Albert Einstein
Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.
Albert Einstein
A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order.
Albert Einstein
Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
Albert Einstein
I prefer to make up my own quotes and attribute them to very smart people, so that I can use them to win arguments.
Albert Einstein
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Albert Einstein
It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce the new ideas.
Albert Einstein
If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker.
Albert Einstein
A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.
Albert Einstein
Earth is the insane asylum of the universe.
Albert Einstein
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
Albert Einstein
Necessity is the mother of all invention.
Albert Einstein
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
Albert Einstein
The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
Albert Einstein
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
Albert Einstein
It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.
Albert Einstein
It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
Albert Einstein
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry.
Albert Einstein
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
Albert Einstein
I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein
Never lose a holy curiosity.
Albert Einstein
Failure is success in progress.
Albert Einstein
Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think.
Albert Einstein
I don't need to know everything, I just need to know where to find it, when I need it.
Albert Einstein
We must be prepared to make the same heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Albert Einstein
The only justifiable purpose of political institutions is to ensure the unhindered development of the individual.
Albert Einstein
Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
Albert Einstein
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.
Albert Einstein
To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window.
Albert Einstein
Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens.
Albert Einstein
In the matter of physics, the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds.
Albert Einstein
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Albert Einstein
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
Albert Einstein
Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
Albert Einstein
Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.
Albert Einstein
A desk, some pads, a pencil, and a large basket - to hold all of my mistakes.
Albert Einstein
It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
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 formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.
Albert Einstein
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
Albert Einstein
Work is the only thing that gives substance to life.
Albert Einstein
To invent something, all you need is imagination and a big pile of junk.
Albert Einstein
Brief is this existence, as a visit in a strange house. The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness.
Albert Einstein
Organized people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.
Albert Einstein
Only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.
Albert Einstein
It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.
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
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
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
One strength of the Communist system... is that it has some of the characteristics of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.
Albert Einstein
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Albert Einstein
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
Albert Einstein
For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.
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
For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe.
Albert Einstein
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
Albert Einstein
I don't believe in mathematics.
Albert Einstein
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
Albert Einstein
Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.
Albert Einstein
Do you believe in immortality? No, and one life is enough for me.
Albert Einstein
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein
Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.
Albert Einstein
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Albert Einstein
I believe in standardizing automobiles, not human beings.
Albert Einstein
It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped.
Albert Einstein
America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice.
Albert Einstein
Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.
Albert Einstein
The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it.
Albert Einstein
With fame, I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.
Albert Einstein
We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know.
Albert Einstein
You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity. No we must not; you will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball.
Albert Einstein
The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service.
Albert Einstein
Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labor of all.
Albert Einstein
Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
Albert Einstein
I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.
Albert Einstein
