Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

— Albert Einstein

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

— Albert Einstein

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

God always takes the simplest way.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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?

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

It is theory that decides what can be observed.

— Albert Einstein

Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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!

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

How do I work? I grope.

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivablethough much less certainthat extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat or exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase mans blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

— Albert Einstein

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source ... They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres.

— Albert Einstein

One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.

— Albert Einstein

Of all the communities available to us there is not one I would want to devote myself to, except for the society of the true searchers, which has very few living members at any time.

— Albert Einstein

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

— Albert Einstein

Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.

— Albert Einstein

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

— Albert Einstein

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i. e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.

— Albert Einstein

It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry ….

— Albert Einstein

Education is that which remains if one has forgotten everything else he learned in school

— Albert Einstein

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

— Albert Einstein

Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. // Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?

— Albert Einstein

It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

— Albert Einstein

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

— Albert Einstein

To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.

— Albert Einstein

Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us.

— Albert Einstein

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

It's not that I'm smart, I just stick with problems longer.

— Albert Einstein