All Albert Einstein Quotes & Sayings

Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills). — Albert Einstein

If I had it [life] to do all over again, I'd have been a plumber. — Albert Einstein

This must be changed, if only in America's own interest. The last war has shown that there are no longer any barriers between the continents and that the destinies of all countries are closely interwoven. The people of this country must realize that they have a great responsibility in the sphere of international politics. The part of passive spectator is unworthy of this country and is bound in the end to lead to disaster all round. — Albert Einstein

The most difficult part about understanding something is that we understand it all. — Albert Einstein

All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to answer the question, "What are light quanta?" Of course today every rascal thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself. — Albert Einstein

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense... Schopenhauer's saying, 'A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,' has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life's hardships, my own and others', and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humour its due. — Albert Einstein

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself. — Albert Einstein

Non-comprehenders are often distressed. Not you, though-because with good humor you're blessed. After all, your thoughts went like this, I dare say: It was none but the Lord who made us that way. — Albert Einstein

Past is dead
Future is uncertain;
Present is all you have,
So eat, drink and live merry. — Albert Einstein

What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind. — Albert Einstein

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. — Albert Einstein

One has to realize that the powerful industrial groups concerned in the manufacture of arms are doing their best in all countries to prevent the peaceful settlement of international disputes, and that rulers can achieve this great end only if they are sure of the vigorous support of the majority of their peoples. — Albert Einstein

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

I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury. — Albert Einstein

PREFACE A New Look at the Legacy of Albert Einstein Genius. Absent-minded professor. The father of relativity. The mythical figure of Albert Einstein - hair flaming in the wind, sockless, wearing an oversized sweatshirt, puffing on his pipe, oblivious to his surroundings - is etched indelibly on our minds. "A pop icon on a par with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, he stares enigmatically from postcards, magazine covers, T-shirts, and larger-than-life posters. A Beverly Hills agent markets his image for television commercials. He would have hated it all," writes biographer Denis Brian. Einstein is among the greatest scientists of all time, a towering figure who ranks alongside Isaac Newton for his contributions. Not surprisingly, Time magazine voted him the Person of the Century. Many historians have placed him among the hundred most influential people of the last thousand years. — Michio Kaku

[There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens. — Albert Einstein

In art, and in the higher ranges of science, there is a feeling of harmony which underlies all endeavor. There is no true greatness in art or science without that sense of harmony. — Albert Einstein

An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion. But one must avoid the prejudice that regards the religions of primitive peoples as pure fear religions and those of the civilized races as pure moral religions. All are mixed forms, though the moral element predominates in the higher levels of social life. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of the idea of God. — Albert Einstein

Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate. — Albert Einstein

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 centralisation 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? — Albert Einstein

Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labour of all. — Albert Einstein

On the other side, Church spokesmen could scarcely become enthusiastic about Planck's deism, which omitted all reference to established religions and had no more doctrinal content than Einstein's Judaism. — J.L. Heilbron

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

My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born, and that is all that is necessary. — Albert Einstein

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. — Albert Einstein

Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. — Albert Einstein

Not all that counts, can be counted — Albert Einstein

A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. — Albert Einstein

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. — Albert Einstein

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling 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. — Albert Einstein

We shall be able to solve the problem when it will be clearly evident to all that there is no other, no cheaper way out of the present situation. — Albert Einstein

Belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. — Albert Einstein

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual. — Albert Einstein

Ours is the first era in which it has been possible for people of different
nations to conduct their affairs in a friendly and understanding manner. In the old days, peoples spent their lives fearing and even hating one another because of ignorance on all sides. — Albert Einstein

Our task is to widen our circle of compassion to include all living beings and all of nature — Albert Einstein

Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter. — Albert Einstein

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. — Albert Einstein

It's happened many times before. Usually it results in an exceptional and gifted human. Some of the greatest figures in Earth's history were actually the product of humans and the Loric, including Buddha, Aristotle, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein ... Aprodite, Apollo, Hermes, and Zeus were all real, and had one Loric parent — Pittacus Lore

In a Sense, we all are Time Travelers! We are Surviving each and every Active Time-Point in this Timeline....... — Aldrin Mathew

But you know, there's one simple thing I see absolutely clearly, now that I am so very old.
I looked at her. The Albert Einstein hairstyle, and the bright black eyes and the sharp nose. That pallor on her face.
She put her small hand on mine.
The world is wonderful, she said. All its little things. It is wonderful. — Nuala O'Faolain

A forced faithfulness is a bitter fruit for all concerned. — 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

I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgement in all human affairs. — Albert Einstein

I had a sneaking suspicion that time was not constant, but I guess I could never prove it. I suppose it didn't really matter. I even had a theory that time didn't go in straight line at all. I knew I was no Albert Einstein, but I had the sneaking suspicion that everything had happened, was happening, or would happen was really happening all the time. There was no past, present, and future. Everything was going on all at once and forever. If that was true, then each moment was eternity. — Mark A. Roeder

In the shadow of the atomic bomb it has become even more apparent that all men are, indeed, brothers. — Albert Einstein

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. — Albert Einstein

Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience exclaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same." — Albert Einstein

The harmony of natural law reveals an Intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. — Albert Einstein

We are all very ignorant. What happens is that not all ignore the same things. — Albert Einstein

It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine - each was discovered by one man. — Albert Einstein

All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us. — Albert Einstein

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

A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind. — Albert Einstein

George Bernard Shaw, in a toast at a dinner feting Albert Einstein, proclaimed, "Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more." Isn't that glorious? Science (and I think this applies to all kinds of research and scholarship) produces ignorance, possibly at a faster rate than it produces knowledge. Science, then, is not like the onion in the often used analogy of stripping away layer after layer to get at some core, central, fundamental truth. Rather it's like the magic well: no matter how — Stuart Firestein

If one purges all subsequent additions from the original teachings of the Prophets and Christianity, especially those of the priests, one is left with a doctrine that is capable of curing all the social ills of humankind. Statement — Albert Einstein

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards. — Albert Einstein

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details. — Albert Einstein

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. — Albert Einstein

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. - ALBERT EINSTEIN — Richard Dawkins

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. — Albert Einstein

All I want to do is learn to think like God. All the rest is just details. — Albert Einstein

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. — Albert Einstein

(If God wills it) ... the number of angels ... may be infinite ... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create ... Atoms and angels, reason and faith ... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all ... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. — Keith Donohue

One has a feeling that one has a kind of home in this timeless community of human beings that strive for truth ... I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people. — Albert Einstein

Remember today, for it is the beginning of always. Today marks the start of a brave new future filled with all your dreams can hold. Think truly to the future and make those dreams come true. — Albert Einstein

The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time. — Albert Einstein

For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have any hold on him. — Albert Einstein

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. — Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein once said that 'insanity' was 'Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to achieve different results'. He was a clever chap, that Einstein fella. And, according to him, I must have been insane. Because I kept on working hard, and I kept on expecting to be rewarded, even though my hard work had never been rewarded before. I didn't have any evidence to suggest that I'd be rewarded. It wasn't a rational belief. It all came down to optimism. Blind, debilitating optimism. — Joss Sheldon

I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. — Ray Bradbury

In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton's laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematical methods by means of deduction. — Albert Einstein

Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay. — Albert Einstein

An observer who is sitting eccentrically on the disc K' is sensible of a force which acts outwards in a radial direction, and which would be interpreted as an effect of inertia (centrifugal force) by an observer who was at rest with respect to the original reference-body K. But the observer on the disc may regard his disc as a reference body which is "at rest"; on the basis of the general principle of relativity he is justified in doing this. The force acting on himself, and in fact on all other bodies which are at rest relative to the disc, he regards as the effect of a gravitational field. — Albert Einstein

I appeal to all men and women, whether they be eminent or humble, to declare that they will refuse to give any further assistance to war or the preparation of war. — Albert Einstein

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish. — Albert Einstein

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! — Albert Einstein

Necessity is the mother of all invention. — Albert Einstein

Concern for man himself must always constitute the chief objective of all technological effort — Albert Einstein

A desk, some pads, a pencil, and a large basket
to hold all of mu mistakes. — Albert Einstein

What can the schools do to defend democracy? Should they preach a specific political doctrine? I believe they should not. If they are able to teach young people to have a critical mind and a socially oriented attitude, they will have done all that is necessary. — Albert Einstein

Insofar as we may at all claim that slavery has been abolished today, we owe its abolition to the practical consequences of science — Albert Einstein

In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were [someone to] drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him. — Albert Einstein

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper. — Albert Einstein

The basis of all scientific work is the conviction that the world is an ordered and comprehensive entity, which is a religious sentiment. My religious feeling is a humble amazement at the order revealed in the small patch of reality to which our feeble intelligence is equal. — Albert Einstein

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. — Albert Einstein

I do not believe that a moral philosophy can ever be founded on a scientific basis. ... The valuation of life and all its nobler expressions can only come out of the soul's yearning toward its own destiny. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulas must fail. Of that I am perfectly convinced. — Albert Einstein

I will even go out on a limb and say that we mistakenly may have been putting all our educational eggs into one basket only, while shortchanging other truly valuable capabilities of the human brain, namely perception, intuition, imagination, and creativity. Perhaps Albert Einstein put it best: The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. — Betty Edwards

Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars ... The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him. — Albert Einstein

Is it not a terrible thing to be forced by society to do things which all of us as individuals regard as abominable crimes? — Albert Einstein

All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein

I hate all the loathsome nonsense that goes with patriotism. — Albert Einstein

What I'm really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all. — Albert Einstein

Free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind. There is no room in this for the divinization of a nation, of a class, let alone of an individual. Are we not all children of one father, as it is said in religious language? — Albert Einstein

A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order. — Albert Einstein

I do not believe in race as such. Race is a fraud. All modern people are the conglomeration of so many ethnic mixtures that no pure race remains. — Albert Einstein

Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized. — Albert Einstein

Independent and stubborn natures, such as are particularly common among men of learning, do not readily bow to another's will and for the most part only accept his leadership grudgingly. But when Lorentz is in the presidential chair, an atmosphere of happy cooperation is invariably created, however much those present may differ in their aims and habits of thought. The secret of this success lies not only in his swift comprehension of people and things and his marvelous command of language, but above all in this, that one feels that his whole heart is in the business at hand, and that when he is at work, he has room for nothing else in his mind. Nothing disarms the recalcitrant so much as this. — Albert Einstein

[Max Planck] was one of the finest people I have ever known ... but he really didn't understand physics, [because] during the eclipse of 1919 he stayed up all night to see if it would confirm the bending of light by the gravitational field. If he had really understood [general relativity], he would have gone to bed the way I did — Albert Einstein

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is-insofar as it is thinkable at all-primitive and muddled. — Albert Einstein

Not all things worth counting are countable and not all things that count are worth counting. — Albert Einstein