This page is devoted to statements by Albert Einstein. They may be duplicated under other categories.
Albert Einstein
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend 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.
Never regard your 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.
Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.
The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perveived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
In the teaching of geography and history a synpathetic understanding (should) 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."
Life Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.
The most precious things in life are note those one gets for money.
The conscientious objector is a revoultionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.
My pacificism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of people is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.
There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.
It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel."
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
Nationalism, in my opinion, is nothing more than an idealistic rationalization for militarism and aggression.
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, 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.
I consider the Society of Friends the religious community which has the highest moral standards. As far as I know, they have never made evil compromises and are always guided by their conscience. In international life, especially, their influence seems to me very beneficial and effective.
You cannot love a car the way you love a horse. The horse brings out human feelings the way machines cannot do. Things like machines may develop or negelect certain things in people...Machines make our life impersonal and stultify certain elements in us and create an impersonal environment.
I believe that the horrifying deterioration in the ethical conduct of people today stems from the mechanization and dehumnaization of our lives - the disasterous by-product of the scientific and technical mentality. Nostra culpa. Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits.
Betterment of conditions the world ovber is not essentially dependent on scientific knowledge but on the fulfillment of human traditions and ideals.
I am content in my later years. I have kept my good humor and take neither myself nor hte next person seriously.
Human beings can attain a worthy and harmonious life only if they are able to rid themsleves, within the limits of human nature, of the striving for the wish fulfillments of material kinds. The goal is to raise the spiritual values of society.
I admit thoughts influence the body.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.
I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity foreward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure personages is the only thing that can lead us to find ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always irresistibly tempts its owner to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi with the moneybags of Carnegie?
E = M C
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
God is subtle but he is not malicious.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
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.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.
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.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledges shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
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.
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
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.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all 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.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
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.
Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me.
That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
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.
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.
...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.
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, 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.
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us '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 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.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton
You're aware the boy failed my grade school math class, I take it? And not that many years later he's teaching college. Now I ask you: Is that the sorriest indictment of the American educational system you ever heard? [pauses to light cigarette.] No aptitude at all for long division, but never mind. It's him they ask to split the atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But then, I suppose it's like the man says, It's not what you know... Karl Arbeiter: former teacher of Albert Einstein
Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)
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