Albert Einstein Quotes on Man (37 Quotes)

The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man.

Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men ... shall we ... be able to speak of mankind as civilized.

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.

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 symbolically devices.

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties 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.

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life. The World as I See It, 1934

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

a brave man, whose only fault was being a woman.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?

Written in old age I have never belonged wholeheartedly to a country, a state, nor to a circle of friends, nor even to my own family. When I was still a rather precocious young man, I already realized most vividly the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives. Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men 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.

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.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based 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 and am still receiving.

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.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe a spirit vastly superior to that of man.... In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.

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 impenatrable 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 amoung profoundly religious men.

Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.

Enjoying the joys of others and suffering with them - these are the best guides for man.

The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.

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.

Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.

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.

He who finds though that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted great grace. He who, in addition, experiences the recognition, sympathy, and help of the best minds of his times, had been given almost more happiness than one man can bear

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else unless it is an enemy.

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minuteand it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.

It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.

Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.

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

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

Strange is our situation here upon 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.

I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.

Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.