--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only a life lived
for others is worth living.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Few are those who
see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes one pays
most for the things one gets for nothing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not everything that
counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The secret to
creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is a miracle that
curiosity survives formal education.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am enough of an
artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important
than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
What Life Means to
Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, for the October 26,
1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gravity can not
be held responsible for people falling in love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things should be
made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joy in looking and
comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problems cannot be
solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strange is our
situation here upon Earth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are out to
describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An empty stomach is
not a good political advisor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Force always
attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule
that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Try not to become a
man of success but rather to become a man of value.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perfection of means
and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The faster you go,
the shorter you are.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nationalism is an
infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only reason for
time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The foundation of
morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority
lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority
imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Politics is a
pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by
perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All our lauded
technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the
hand of the pathological criminal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only one who devotes
himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true
master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Desire for approval
and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged
as better, stronger or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow
scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological
adjustment, which may become in jurious for the individual and for the
community.
On Education,
Address to the State University of New York at Albany, in Ideas and
Opinions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If we knew what it
was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Common sense is the
collection of prejudices eighteen.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Albert Einstein,
when asked to describe radio, replied:
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God doesn't play
dice with the universe.
[Also quoted as: I
cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
God may be subtle,
but He isn't plain mean.
[Also found as: God
is subtle, but he is not malicious.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know not with what
weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought
with sticks and stones.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If A equals success,
then the formula is: A = X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your
mouth shut.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I had only known,
I would have been a locksmith.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Man usually avoids
attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it is an
enemy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hardest thing in
the world to understand is the income tax.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If the facts don't
fit the theory, change the facts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I never think of the
future. It comes soon enough.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before God we are
all equally wise - and equally foolish.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most
incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all
comprehensible.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The release of
atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more
urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You cannot
simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are only two
ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other
is as though everything is a miracle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A man's ethical
behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social
ties and needs; 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.
[Religion and Science, New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What really
interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If one studies too
zealously, one easily loses his pants.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Through the release
of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most
revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This
basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept
of narrow nationalisms.
For there is no
secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control
except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples
of the world. We scientists recognize our inescapable responsibility to
carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its
implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only
hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not
for death.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are out to
describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most beautiful
thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true
art and science.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gravitation is not
responsible for people falling in love.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
(1929)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How I wish that
somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good
will.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not worry about
your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still
greater.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The significant
problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we
were at when we created them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I maintain that
cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to
scientific research.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to know God's
thoughts; the rest are details.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Weakness of attitude
becomes weakness of character.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The eternal mystery
of the world is its comprehensibility.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Science without
religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Science, Philosophy
and Religion: a Symposium (1941) ch. 13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyone who has never
made a mistake has never tried anything new.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything should be
made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Science is a
wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If my theory of
relativity is proven correct, 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most beautiful
thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true
art and 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.
Quoted on pg. 289 of
Adventures of a Mathematician, by S. M. Ulam (Charles Scribner's Sons,
New York, 1976).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a
posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of
conceptualization. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what
should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain
necessary.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I maintain that
cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of
scientific research.
Albert with Kurt Godel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why does this
applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so
little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet
learned to make sensible use of it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The process of
scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The whole of science
is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When the number of
factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large
scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the
weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is
impossible. Nevertheless, no one doubts that we are confronted with a
causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us.
Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction
because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack
of order in nature.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scientific research
is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by
laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action 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,
1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray.
Source: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, Edited by Helen Dukas and
Banesh Hoffmann]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the temple of
science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell
therein and the motives that have led them hither. 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 an angel of the Lord to come and 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think that a
particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements.
That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not
being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not
looking at it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All religions, arts
and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are
directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere
physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Relativity teaches
us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same
reality.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sometimes ask
myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of
relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to
think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has
thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded,
as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I
had already grown up.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Put your hand on a
hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty
girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When a blind beetle
crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn't realize that the track
he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have no particular
talent. I am merely inquisitive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not that I'm so
smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I had my life to
live over again, I'd be a plumber.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I were not a
physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I
live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get
most joy in life out of music.
What Life Means to
Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, for the October 26,
1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As far as I'm
concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a story I
heard as a freshman at the University of Utah when Dr. Henry Eyring was
still teaching chemistry there. Many years before he and Dr. Einstein
were colleagues. As they walked together they noted an unusual plant
growing along a garden walk. Dr. Eyring asked Dr. Einstein if he knew
what the plant was. Einstein did not, and together they consulted a
gardener. The gardener indicated the plant was green beans and forever
afterwards Eyring said Einstein didn't know beans . I heard this second
hand and I don't know if the story has ever been published...
-S K Franz-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I examine
myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift
of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive
knowledge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
True religion is
real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and
righteousness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When the solution is
simple, God is answering.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The religion of the
future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on
experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would
cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I cannot conceive of
a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind
that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to
conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble
souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied
with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a
glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with
the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the
Reason that manifests itself in nature.
[The World as I See
It]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We should take care
not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles,
but no personality.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The highest
principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the
Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with
our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a
sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations. If one were to take
that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely
human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible
development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely
and gladly in the service of all mankind. ... it is only to the
individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual
is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intelligence makes
clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking
cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make
clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the
emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most
important function which religion has to form in the social life of man.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was, of course, a
lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being
systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have
never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me
which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for
the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
[Albert Einstein,
1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and
Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am convinced that
some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic
organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a
whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth
control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a
serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any
attempt to organize peace on this planet.
[letter, 1954]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I cannot conceive of
a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals,
or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I
cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a
certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking
of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My
religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior
spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and
transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the
highest importance -- but for us, not for God.
[Albert Einstein,
from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh
Hoffman, Princeton University Press]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The finest emotion
of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of
all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who
is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a
dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and
manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this
knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious
sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among
profoundly religious men.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The more a man is
imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his
conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent cause of
natural events.
To be sure, the
doctrine of a personal God interfering with the natural events could
never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can
always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has
not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on
the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy
but also fatal.
For a doctrine which
is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress .... If it is one of the goals of religions to liberate mankind
as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and
fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in another sense.
Although it is true
that it is the goal of science to discover (the) rules which permit the
association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim. It also
seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible
number of mutually independent conceptual elements. It is in this
striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it
encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this
attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to
illusion.
But whoever has
undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this
domain, is moved by the profound reverence for the rationality made
manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far
reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires,
and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of
reason, incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is
inaccessible to man. T
his attitude,
however, appears to me to be religious in the highest sense of the word.
And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious
impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a
religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.
[Albert Einstein,
Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium, published by the
Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the
Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whoever undertakes
to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is
shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only source of
knowledge is experience.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The important thing
is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of
eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough
if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading, after a
certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any
man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy
habits of thinking.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the last
century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was
an irreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. 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. According to
this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to
thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the
people's education, must serve that end exclusively.
Quoting Newton
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We all know, from
what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts
spring from our desires and our fears. Intuition tells us that that is
true also of our fellows and of the higher animals. We all try to escape
pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant. We are all ruled in what
we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions
in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race. Hunger,
love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the
individual's instinct for self preservation. At the same time, as social
beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such
feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on. All
these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs
of man's actions. All such action would cease if those powerful
elemental forces were to cease stirring within us. Though our conduct
seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary
instincts are much alike in them and in us. The most evident difference
springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively
strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is
by language and other symbolical devices. Thought is the organizing
factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the
resulting actions. In that way imagination and intelligence enter into
our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts. But
their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the
immediate claims of our instincts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Knowledge of what is
does not open the door directly to what should be. If one asks the
whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be
stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist
in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct
and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that
is, as something living, without its being necessary to find
justification for their existence. They come into being not through
demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful
personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense
their nature simply and clearly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The devil has put a
penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we
suffer in soul or we get fat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The pursuit of truth
and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain
children all our lives.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A table, a chair, a
bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fear of death is
the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for
someone who's dead.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ideals which
have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are
goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has
never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be
sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Without deep
reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A hundred times
every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the
labors of others.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two things inspire
me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is a magnificent
feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be
things quite apart from the direct visible truth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Watch the stars, and
from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track,
without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A human being is
part of a whole, called by us the 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 us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of
nature in its beauty.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The human mind is
not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child
entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with
books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have
written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand
the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite
plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does
not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What I see in Nature
is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly,
and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is
a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The true value of a
human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in
which he has attained liberation from the self.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Understanding of our
fellow human beings...becomes fruitful only when it is sustained by
sympathetic feelings in joy and sorrow.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Man tries to make
for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and
intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to
substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to
overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative
philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.
Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional
life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not
find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
Ideas and Opinions,
(Dell, Pinebrook, N.J., 1954)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is only to the
individual that a soul is given.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In order to be an
immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep
oneself.
Albert with Charlie
Chaplin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The minority, the
ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church
as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the
emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
[letter to Sigmund Freud, 30 July 1932]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Few people are
capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the
prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable
of forming such opinions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I do not believe in
immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an
exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
[The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, and published
by Princeton University Press.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The real problem is
in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than
to denature the evil spirit of man.
Quoted in: Freeman
Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, ch. 5 (1979).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He who joyfully
marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has
been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would
fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at
once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable
love-of-country stance, 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peace cannot be
achieved through violence, it can only be attained through
understanding.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since I do not
foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have
to say that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps it is well that it
should be. It may intimidate the human race into bringing order into
it's international affairs, which without the pressure of fear, it would
not do.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nor do I take into
account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to
destroy part or all of the planet...But it is not necessary to imagine
the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to
understand vividly the growing scope of atomic war and to recognize that
unless another war is prevented it is likely to bring destruction on a
scale never before held possible, and even now hardly conceived, and
that little civilization would survive it. (1947)
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Unless Americans
come to realize that they are not stronger in the world because they
have the bomb but weaker because of their vulnerability to atomic
attack, they are not likely to conduct their policy at Lake Success [the
United Nations] or in their relations with Russia in a spirit that
furthers the arrival at an understanding.
(1947)
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The discovery of
nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind
any more than did the discovery of matches. We only must do everything
in our power to safeguard against its abuse. Only a supranational
organization, equipped with a sufficiently strong executive power, can
protect us. (1953)
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Never regard study
as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the
liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own
personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work
belongs.
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Teaching should be
such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a
hard duty .
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It is the supreme
art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
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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?
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The school has
always been the most important means of transferring the wealth of
tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even
higher degree than in former times, for through modern development of
economic life, the family as bearer of tradition and education has
become weakened. The continuance and health of human society is
therefore in a still higher degree dependent on school than formally.
New York Times,
October 16, 1936
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The point is to
develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for
recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society.
Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in
his province.
Out of My Later
Years
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To me the worst
thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear,
force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound
sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces
a subservient subject.
Ideas and Opinions
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One should guard
against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the
main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in
life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of
the value of the result to the community.
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With the affairs of
active human beings it is different. Here knowledge of truth alone does
not suffice; on the contrary this knowledge must continually be renewed
by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of
marble which stands in the desert and is continuously threatened with
burial by the shifting sands. The hands of science must ever be at work
in order that the marble column continue everlastingly to shine in the
sun. To those serving hands mine also belong.
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One should guard
against inculcating a young man {or woman} with the idea that success is
the aim of life, for a successful man normally receives from his peers
an incomparably greater portion than the services he has been able to
render them deserve. The value of a man resides in what he gives and not
in what he is capable of receiving. The most important motive for study
at school, at the university, and in life is the pleasure of working and
thereby obtaining results which will serve the community. The most
important task for our educators is to awaken and encourage these
psychological forces in a young man {or woman}. Such a basis alone can
lead to the joy of possessing one of the most precious assets in the
world - knowledge or artistic skill.
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We have penetrated
far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of
living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule
of fixed necessity ..... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the
connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself.
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(1) Those
instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of
all human beings should be produced by the least possible labor of all.
(2) The satisfaction
of physical needs is indeed the indispensable precondition of a
satisfactory existence, but in itself is not enough. In order to be
content men must also have the possibility of developing their
intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accord with their
personal characteristics and abilities.
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If the possibility
of the spiritual development of all individuals is to be secured, a
second kind of outward freedom is necessary. The development of science
and of the creative activities of the spirit in general requires still
another kind of freedom, which may be characterized as inward freedom.
It is this freedom of the spirit which consists in the interdependence
of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices
as well as from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This
inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy object for
the individual.
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I cannot imagine a
God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes
are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of
human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the
death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through
fear or ridiculous egotisms.
[Albert Einstein,
obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955]
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Making allowances
for human imperfections, I do feel that in America the most valuable
thing in life is possible; the development of the individual and his
creative powers.
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I live in that
solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of
maturity.
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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.
