"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."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"The only real valuable thing is intuition."
"A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
"I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
"God is subtle but he is not malicious."
"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at
it."
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates
empirically."
"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological
criminal."
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is
comprehensible."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we
created them."
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in
school."
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own
reason for existing."
"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine
are still greater."
"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present,
but an equation is something for eternity."
"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."
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure
about the the universe."
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as
far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge
is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV
will be fought with sticks and stones."
"In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above
all, be a sheep."
"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk
of accident for
someone who's dead."
"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."
"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that
goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
"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?"
"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."
"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."
"The release of atom 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."
"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."
"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."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a
poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward
after death."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the
examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had
such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the
final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific
problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
"...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."
"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already
earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake,
since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace
to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at
command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble
war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base
an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war
is nothing but an act of murder."
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can
be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)
