Since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have

to say that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps it is well that it should be. It may
intimidate the human race into bringing order into it's international affairs, which without
the pressure of fear, it would not do.

Human beings, vegetables, or comic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned
in the distance by an invisible player

The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.

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.

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

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.




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

In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell
therein and the motives that have led them hither. Many take to science out of a joyful
sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they
look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in
the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian
purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to
these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted,
but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside.

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in
my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in
thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.


Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet
the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of
the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large
ones either.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of
scientific research.

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both
for the body and the mind.



The environment is everything that isn't me.

To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing
Newton's ground.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring
within us.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

 It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible

nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be
merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.

All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the
principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a
very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is
the same, only without the cat.


Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land
than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

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.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of
thinking.

The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man
by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by
language and other symbolically devices.

Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he
senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for
other people.





I believe that the first step in the setting of a real external world is the formation of the
concept of bodily objects and of bodily objects of various kinds.

I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.

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

How do I work? I grope.

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

It is theory that decides what can be observed.


Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes
by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on
experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific
needs it will be Buddhism....

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

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.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend 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.





Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions
referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all
true art and 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.

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

Love is a better teacher than duty.

The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth
of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of
weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and
combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me
to be empty and devoid of meaning.

 With the affairs of active human beings it is different. Here knowledge of truth alone
does not suffice; on the contrary this knowledge must continually be renewed by
ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the
desert and is continuously threatened with burial by the shifting sands. The hands of
science must ever be at work in order that the marble column continue everlastingly to
shine in the sun. To those serving hands mine also belong.

And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose
himself in any other way.

If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its
purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development
of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all
mankind.

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.

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn;for what
purpose we know not, though sometimes sense it. But we know from daily life that we
exist for other people first of all for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness
depends





The only real valuable thing is intuition.

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

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

Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our
age.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people
and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.



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

An attempt at visualizing the Fourth Dimension: Take a point, stretch it into a line, curl
it into a circle, twist it into a sphere, and punch through the sphere.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

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

Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.

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.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one.

Lasting harmony with a woman (was) an undertaking in which I twice failed rather
disgracefully.

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

We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of
living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed
necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality,
but not a knowledge of order itself.

Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary
instincts and the resulting actions.

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

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

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created
them.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

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 will be killed.

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

A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war.

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

Unless Americans come to realize that they are not stronger in the world because
they have the bomb but weaker because of their vulnerability to atomic attack, they are
not likely to conduct their policy at Lake Success [the United Nations] or in their
relations with Russia in a spirit that furthers the arrival at an understanding.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

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.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all
true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder
and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us
really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their 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 rank of devoutly religious men.

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.

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.

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

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small
problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

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

 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.

Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and
intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of
his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the
poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.
Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to
find in this way peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of
personal experience.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not
knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily
life, however, there is one thing we do know that man is here for the sake of other men.

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

Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.

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

The faster you go, the shorter you are.

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss
the attention it deserves.

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

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





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

The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the
Jewish-Christian religious tradition.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be
acknowledged as better, stronger or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow
scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may
become injurious for the individual and for the community.

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.


I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the
same reality.

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

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.

A theory is the more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more
different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended the range of its
applicability.

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.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character
of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of
objective perception and thought

Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great
enough to destroy part or all of the planet...But it is not necessary to imagine the earth
being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the growing
scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is prevented it is likely to
bring destruction on a scale never before held possible, and even now hardly
conceived, and that little civilization would survive it.

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.

 They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the
medium of powerful personalities.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

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.

Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe
within.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to
receive.

 This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural
scientists do, each in his own fashion.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through
understanding.

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.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now
know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever
will be to know and understand.



The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own
efforts.

LOVE: 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 (-)

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.

Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere
thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear
these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the
individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to form
in the social life of man.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

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

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.

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 &
ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing &
searching can be promoted by means of coercion & a sense of duty. To the
contrary, I believe that 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, especially if the food, handed out under such
coercion, were to be selected accordingly

The school has always been the most important means of transferring the wealth of
tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even higher degree
than in former times, for through modern development of economic life, the family as
bearer of tradition and education has become weakened.The continuance and health of
human society is therefore in a still higher degree dependent on school than formally.

love to travel, But hate to arrive

 Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order
to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of
personal experience.

According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to
thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's
education, must serve that end exclusively.

Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the
primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.

The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military
service.

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

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.




I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements.
That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I
like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.

On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to
the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.

It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.

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.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle,
requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

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

If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain
and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together
must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the
hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.

Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic
thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association
as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by
the process of conceptualisation. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what
should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an
exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.




It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear
to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.

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 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.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's
instinct for self preservation.





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. Should my theory prove untrue,
France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.

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

God is clever, but not dishonest.

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.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which
is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

 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.

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

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.

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

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

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





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.

Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.

The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for
recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school
demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.

In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of
servants of the primary instincts.

The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking
we were at when we created them.


I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of
relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems
of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my
intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about
space and time only when I had already grown up.

The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be
replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was
superstition, and as such had to be opposed.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

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.

But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims
of our instincts.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

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

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an
ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on
my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Do you believe in immortality? No, and one life is enough for me

Any 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.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development
accorded the individual.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than
anyone else.





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.

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

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.

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts
cannot necessarily be counted.

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.

 Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the
variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

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.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing
will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.



I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be
fought with sticks and stones.

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.

There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the
way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.

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.

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

He who finds though that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal
mystery of nature has been granted great grace. He who, in addition, experiences the
recognition, sympathy, and help of the best minds of his times, had been given almost
more happiness than one man can bear

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that
our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

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

On the big Bang theory: 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.

My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born
and that is all that is necessary.

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

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

Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach

Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are
wrong: it is character.

One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days
ahead is impossible.

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and
only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.





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

When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked
among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been
aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its
way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit
on a hot stove for a minute -- then it's longer than any hour. That's relativity!

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was
an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.

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

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

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.

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

Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty
lies Opportunity.

 I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and
dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.

When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn't realize that the
track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

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.

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.

It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has
overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.

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

Many times a day I realize how much my own life is built on the labors of my
fellowmen, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I
have received.

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on
Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

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

So long as there are men there will be wars. So long as there are men there will be
wars.

The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this:
how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence
should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?




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.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about
the former.

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

Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that
tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.

Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of
minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.

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.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive
knowledge.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest
on force.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?

To understand the world one must not be worrying about one's self.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then
only for a short while.

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.

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

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form
as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is
pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to
the community

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the
germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no
longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that
what is impenatrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and
the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this
sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself amoung profoundly religious men.

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

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still
greater.

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.

Education is the progressive realization of our ignorance.

People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.

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.

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's
actions.

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

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

The legs are the wheels of creativity.

It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure
unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. We find it easier to add a new study or
course or kind of school than to recognize existing conditions so as to meet the need.
strangled the holy curious of inquiry. 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 know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest
wisdom and the most radiant beauty... this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of
true religiousness.




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

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

God does not play dice with the universe.

God always takes the simplest way.

Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count,
really count.

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


Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation.
For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not
as a hard duty.

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

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--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
us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of
compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising
my voice I can help the greatest of all causes -- goodwill among men and peace on
earth.

Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

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

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. Nevertheless, no one
doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are
in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact
prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of
order in nature.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent
illusion.




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?

It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead;
his eyes are closed.

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.

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury -- to me these have always been
contemptible. I assume that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for
everyone, best for both the body and the mind

Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily,
certain repeatedly occurring complexes of sense impression (partly in conjunction with

sense impressions which are interpreted as signs for sense experiences of others), and
we attribute to them a meaning the meaning of the bodily object.

I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest
part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.

Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular
fellow?

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to
us.

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

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.



The discovery of nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of
mankind any more than did the discovery of matches. We only must do everything in
our power to safeguard against its abuse. Only a supranational organization, equipped
with a sufficiently strong executive power, can protect us.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

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

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

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

Information is not knowledge.


Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child
entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many
different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does
not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written.
But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order
which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

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

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




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

One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and
clearly.

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.

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

The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for
him is always becoming, never being.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be
counted.





Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to
stop questioning.

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

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

Understanding of our fellow human beings...becomes fruitful only when it is sustained
by sympathetic feelings in joy and sorrow.

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

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.

God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain
value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

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.

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


We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant.

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. ... I get most joy in life out of
music.

Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.