Albert Einstein

• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
• Imagination is more important than knowledge.
• 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.
• The only real valuable thing is intuition.
• 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.
• 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 Knowledge is 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
• A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
• All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
• All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.
• An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
• Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
• Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
• As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
• Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
• Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
• Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
• 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.
• God always takes the simplest way.
• I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
• I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
• I have just got a new theory of eternity.
• I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
• I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
• I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
• If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
• If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
• If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
• If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
• If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
• Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
• In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
• Information is not knowledge.
• Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
• Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
• Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
• It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
• It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
• It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
• It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
• It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
• It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
• It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
• It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
• Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
• Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
• Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.
• Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
• Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
• Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
• No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
• 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.
• Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
• Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master.
• People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
• Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
• That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
• The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
• The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
• The environment is everything that isn't me.
• The faster you go, the shorter you are.
• The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
• The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
• The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
• The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
• The only source of knowledge is experience.
• The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
• The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
• The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
• There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
• There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
• There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
• To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
• True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
• We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
• We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
• 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 any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
• When the solution is simple, God is answering.
• 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.
• Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
• You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
• You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.