Albert Einstein Quotes
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How do I work? I grope.
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The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality.
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If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.
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As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies.
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I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
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The satisfaction of physical needs is indeed the indispensable pre-condition of a satisfactory existence, but in itself it is not enough. In order to be content, men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accords with their personal characteristics and abilities.
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If I had it life to do all over again, I'd have been a plumber.
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You might as well not be alive if you're not in awe of God.
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Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.
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Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous.
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Violence sometimes may have cleared away obstructions quickly, but it never has proved itself creative.
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The strange thing about growing old is that the intimate identification with the here and now is slowly lost; one feels transposed into infinity, more or less alone, no longer in hope or fear, only observing.
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Don't be too hard on me. Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.
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The Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion.
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I like neither new clothes nor new kinds of food.
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Only six men in the world know about relativity. I am not one of them. When I ask them to explain, they confused me.
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It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better.
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The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.
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It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
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In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god.
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A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings.
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God is a scientist, not a magician.
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Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source.
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Insofar as mathematics is true, it does not describe the real world. Insofar as it describes the real world, it is not true.