Albert Einstein
I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.
Albert EinsteinToo many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert EinsteinWe 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 organised 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 easi ly 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 aloke 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 organising 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.
Albert EinsteinA finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
Albert EinsteinIntelligence 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.
Albert EinsteinYes, 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.
Albert EinsteinI have never belonged wholeheartedly to a country, a state, nor to a circle of friends, nor even to my own family.
Albert EinsteinWe can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Albert EinsteinAll our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.
Albert EinsteinEducation is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
Albert EinsteinNo, this trick wont work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
Albert EinsteinMy intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.
Albert EinsteinThings should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
Albert EinsteinGravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
Albert EinsteinDo not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater.
Albert EinsteinI cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe.
Albert EinsteinThe 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....
Albert EinsteinProblems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
Albert EinsteinWhy 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.
Albert EinsteinAny power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and 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 EinsteinTo 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.
Albert EinsteinEverything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
Albert EinsteinIn order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
Albert EinsteinNothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert EinsteinThe search for truth is more precious than its possession.
Albert Einstein
