Albert Einstein Quotes
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When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter.
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The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
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People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
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Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means.
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I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of sudden a thought occurred to me: If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight. I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.
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In the teaching of geography and history a sympathetic understanding be fostered for the characteristics of the different peoples of the world, especially for those who we are in the habit of describing as primitive.
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In matters concerning truth and justice there can be no distinction between big problems and small; for the general principles which determine the conduct of men are indivisible. Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.
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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.
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At present every coachman and every waiter argues about whether or not the relativity theory is correct.
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It's not that life has been easy, perfect or exactly as expected. I just choose to be happy and grateful no matter how it all turns out. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
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The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
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The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
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I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.
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That little word 'we' I mistrust and here's why: No man of another can say, 'He is I.' Behind all agreement lies something amiss. All seeming accord cloaks a lurking abyss.
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Of what significance is one's existence, one is basically unaware. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? The bitter and the sweet come from outside. The hard from within, from one's own efforts. For the most part I do what my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn such respect and love for it.
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But in physics I soon learned to scent out the paths that led to the depths, and to disregard everything else, all the many things that clutter up the mind, and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examination, whether one liked it or not.
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The development during the present century is characterized by two theoretical systems essentially independent of each other: the theory of relativity and the quantum theory. The two systems do not directly contradict each other; but they seem little adapted to fusion into one unified theory.
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Philosophy is like a mother who gave birth to and endowed all the other sciences. Therefore, one should not scorn her in her nakedness and poverty, but should hope, rather, that part of her Don Quixote ideal will live on in her children so that they do not sink into philistinism.
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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.
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Love is a better teacher than duty.
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Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
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I am neither a German citizen, nor do I believe in anything that can be described as a 'Jewish faith.' But I am a Jew and glad to belong to the Jewish people, though I do not regard it in any way as chosen.
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I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.
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I find it difficult to believe that I belong to such an idiotic, rotten species - the species that actually boasts of its freedom of will, heroism on command, senseless violence, and all of the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.