E = mc²
In a later statement explaining the ideas expressed by this equation: "It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing—a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E = mc², in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa. The mass and energy were in fact equivalent, according to the formula mentioned before. This was demonstrated by Cockcroft and Walton in 1932, experimentally." ~ Atomic Physics (1948) by the J. Arthur Rank Organization, Ltd. (mp3 audio file of Einstein's voice)
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. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in the United States is closely connected with this.
My First Impression of the U.S.A. (1921)
Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.
As quoted by Abraham Pais in Subtle is the Lord:The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (1982) ISBN 0-192-80672-6
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
A letter to Max Born (12 December 1926); quoted in Einstein: The Life and Times ISBN 0-380-44123-3. This quote is commonly paraphrased as' “God does not play dice with the universe.” ], and other slight variants.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
"What Life Means to Einstein" in The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929)
To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.
Aphorism for a friend (18 September 1930); quoted in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (1988) by Banesh Hoffman
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.
Letter to Vegetarian Watch-Tower (27 December 1930)
"(Nikola Tesla is) an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents... I congratulate (him) on the great successes of (his) life's work."
Einstein's letter to Nikola Tesla during Tesla's 75th Birthday (1931)
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
The World as I see it (1934) [This attribution may be wrong]
I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Letter to Harry S. Truman
I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.
In a comment explaining why he joined the American Federation of Teachers local number 552 as a charter member (1938)
Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks... Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
Time magazine (23 December 1940) page 38. Time Magazine cover
Note that according to eSkeptic Einstein himself says this is an drastically exaggerated quote.
But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. Though I have asserted above that in truth a legitimate conflict between religion and science cannot exist, I must nevertheless qualify this assertion once again on an essential point, with reference to the actual content of historical religions. This qualification has to do with the concept of God. During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes.
Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York (1941)
Er ist eine Skala der Proportionen, die das Schlechte schwierig und das Gute leicht macht.
Translation: [The golden proportion] is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult [to produce] and the good easy.
French translation: Il s'agit d'une échelle de dimensions qui facilite la tâche du créateur; elle lui permet de réaliser facilement le juste et difficilement le faux.
In private letter sent to Le Corbusier in 1946 and quoted in Modulor 1953 pages 58-59
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
As quoted by Virgil Henshaw in Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949)
I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.
Statement upon joining the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club. (1950)
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.
Letter to an atheist (1954); Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1981) edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
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.
Ideas and Opinions (1954)
The idea of achieving security through national armament is, at the present state of military technique, a disastrous illusion.
Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, (1954) p. 159
Development of Western Science is based on two great achievements— the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.
Quoted in Cleopatra's Nose, Essays on the Unexpected, Daniel J Boorstin (1995), New York: Vintage Books, p3).
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 and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
As “quoted” by Steve Mirsky Scientific American (September 2002). Vol. 287, Iss. 3; pg. 102. This should hardly be taken as an authentication of the statement as actually Einstein's, as Mirsky cites the original source as being a fictional magazine: “Amazingly, the pretty girl/hot stove quote is actually the abstract from a short paper written by Einstein that appeared in the now defunct Journal of Exothermic Science and Technology (JEST, Vol. 1, No. 9; 1938).”
The most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile.
As quoted by Harald Anderson in Reinventing Failure: Designing Success
Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications—a temptation to superficiality.
As quoted in "Who Knew?" at NationalGeographic.com (May 2005)
How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there not some more valuable work to be done in his specialty? That's what I hear many of my colleagues ask, and I sense it from many more. But I cannot share this sentiment. When I think about the ablest students whom I have encountered in my teaching — that is, those who distinguish themselves by their independence of judgment and not just their quick-wittedness — I can affirm that they had a vigorous interest in epistemology. They happily began discussions about the goals and methods of science, and they showed unequivocally, through tenacious defense of their views, that the subject seemed important to them.
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. Thus they might come to be stamped as "necessities of thought," "a priori givens," etc. The path of scientific progress if often made impassable for a long time by such errors. Therefore it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing long-held commonplace concepts and showing the circumstances on which their justification and usefulness depend, and how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. Thus their excessive authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legtitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, or replaced if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason.
Obituary for physicist and philosopher Ernest Mach, Phys. Zeitschr. 17, 101 (1916).
It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher. Why then should it not be the right thing for the physicist to let the philosopher do the philosophizing? Such might indeed be the right thing to do a time when the physicist believes he has at his disposal a rigid system of fundamental laws which are so well established that waves of doubt can't reach them; but it cannot be right at a time when the very foundations of physics itself have become problematic as they are now. At a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a newer and more solid foundation, the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of theoretical foundations; for he himself knows best and feels more surely where the shoe pinches. In looking for an new foundation, he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities.
Physics and Reality. J. Franklin Inst. 221, 349 (1936).
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 someone 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.
Letter to Robert A. Thorton, Physics Professor at University of Puerto Rico whom wrote Einstein on persuading colleagues on the importance of philosophy of science to scientists (empiricists) and science (unpublished, dated 7 December 1944 (EA-674), Einstein Archive, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent on each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is — insofar as it is thinkable at all — primitive and muddled.
Contribution in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, P.A. Schilpp, ed. (The Library of Living Philosophers, Evanston, IL (1949), p. 684)
I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to hold on to physical reality.
We are ... all aware of the situation regarding what will turn out to be the basic foundational concepts in physics: the point-mass or the particle is surely not among them; the field, in the Faraday-Maxwell; sense, might be, but not with certainty. But that which we conceive as existing ("real") should somehow be localized in time and space. That is, the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow "exist" independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of space, B. If a physical system stretches over A and B, then what is present in B should somehow have an existence independent of what is present in A. What is actually present in B should thus not depend the type of measurement carried out in the part of space A; it should also be independent of whether or not a measurement is made in A.
If one adheres to this program, then one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one attempts, nevertheless, so to view it, then one must assume that the physically real in B undergoes a sudden change because of a measurement in A. My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion.
However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I don't see at all what physics is supposed to be describing. For what is thought to be a "system" is after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about parts.
"What must be an essential feature of any future fundamental physics?" Letter to Max Born. (M. Born, ed., Albert Einstein-Hedwig und Max Born. Briefwechsel 1916-55, Nymphenburger, Munich (1969), p. 223.)
In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.
Said to German anti-Nazi diplomat and author Prince Hubertus zu Lowenstein around 1941. As quoted in his book Towards the Further Shore : An Autobiography (1968)
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The World As I See It (1931)
Various translated editions have been published of the essay "Mein Weltbild" ("My View of the World"): one compilation which includes it is Ideas and Opinions (1954)
What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times 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...
In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that “a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,” has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its due place.
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.
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 gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude—a feeling which increases with the years.
Variant translation: 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...
My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader.
An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.
Variant translation: In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality...
The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery— even if mixed with fear— that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.
Variant translation: The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery—even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this [sense] alone, I am a deeply religious man.
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence— as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
Variant translation: Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
The state is made for man, not man for the state. And in this respect science resembles the state.
May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!
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Why Socialism? (1949)
Monthly Review New York (May 1949)
Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.
The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. In so far as the labor contract is free what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.
I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?
Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.
This statement refers to the Monthly Review (New York) in which this essay was published.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. Out of My Later Years (collection of Einstein’s essays which cover a period of 1934 to 1950) (1950) p. 13.
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"On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation" Scientific American (April 1950)
This is the reason why all attempts to obtain a deeper knowledge of the foundations of physics seem doomed to me unless the basic concepts are in accordance with general relativity from the beginning. This situation makes it difficult to use our empirical knowledge, however comprehensive, in looking for the fundamental concepts and relations of physics, and it forces us to apply free speculation to a much greater extent than is presently assumed by most physicists.
I do not see any reason to assume that the heuristic significance of the principle of general relativity is restricted to gravitation and that the rest of physics can be dealt with separately on the basis of special relativity, with the hope that later on the whole may be fitted consistently into a general relativistic scheme. I do not think that such an attitude, although historically understandable, can be objectively justified. The comparative smallness of what we know today as gravitational effects is not a conclusive reason for ignoring the principle of general relativity in theoretical investigations of a fundamental character. In other words, I do not believe that it is justifiable to ask: What would physics look like without gravitation?
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"Religion and Science" New York Times Magazine (November 9, 1930)
Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. 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.
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.
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.
It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.
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Sidelights on Relativity
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?
One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts.
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.
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Attributed
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
One thing I have learned in a long life: All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Humans beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
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.
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
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.
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.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.
Before God we are all equally wise — and equally foolish.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
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 single datum of experience.
This is usually paraphrased to: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. This is very similar to "Occam's Razor", with the addition that it warns about too much simplicity. It is also similar to what has become known as the "KISS principle": Keep It Simple, Stupid — but never oversimplify.
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.
In reference to the death of Mahatma Gandhi.
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Variant: Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
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, deplorable love-of-country stance, 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.
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 believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil.
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. (December 1947?)
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.
I could burn my fingers that I wrote that first letter to Roosevelt.
Comment after the bombing of Hiroshima, regarding his letter to Roosevelt warning of the possibility of the development of a nuclear weapon.
I don't pretend to understand the universe — it's much bigger than I am.
I love to travel, but hate to arrive.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
Variant: I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Alternative version: If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z ; X is work, Y is play, and Z is keeping your mouth shut.
If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I'll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.
If I had to live my life over again, I would live it as a trader of goods rather than a student of science.
Variant: If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.
If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will say I am a man of the world. If it's proven wrong, France will say I am a German and Germany will say I am a Jew.
Variant: If relativity is proved right the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German and the Germans will call me a Jew.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom.
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
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.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.
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.
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?
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
This was on a sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton, which is often quoted as a statement by him; research should be able to reveal whether or not it originated with Einstein.
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
On quantum theory I use up more brain grease than on relativity.
He told a friend.
Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.
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.
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.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
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.
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.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.
German: Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht.
http://www.numa.uni-linz.ac.at/Board/titulaer.html may note source
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
The hardest thing to understand is why we can understand anything at all.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
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 my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
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.
The mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.
The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Variant: The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the sower of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger ... is as good as dead.
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.
The only real valuable thing is intuition. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.
Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
There remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.
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 release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)
Variant: ... If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
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.
Then I would have felt sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct.
When asked by a student what he would have done if Sir Arthur Eddington's famous 1919 gravitational lensing experiment, which confirmed relativity, had instead disproved it.
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.
Variant: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
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.
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Two things inspire me to awe: the starry heavens and the moral universe within.
If Einstein said this, he was almost certainly quoting philosopher Immanuel Kant (from the conclusion to the Critique of Pure Reason (1788), cited in the Columbia World of Quotations )
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?
Memoirs?
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.
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
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.
Any fool can know. The point is to understand.
When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
Variant: Only two things are infinite, the universe and the stupidity of mankind, and I'm not sure about the former.