Albert Einstein Quotes on Mind (32 Quotes)


    Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury -- to me these have always been contemptible. I assume that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.

    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.

    Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.

    Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

    Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.


    Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.

    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.

    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.

    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 doe

    Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

    These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward.

    It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education is a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.

    Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

    What a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of the other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous

    The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

    Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

    The truth of a theory is in your mind, not in your eyes.

    Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children.

    We already know that the world is far more complex, and strange, and beautiful than we thought.

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

    I want to know God's thoughts.... the rest are details.

    There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation.

    But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

    There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

    Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

    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.

    Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however, it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

    I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

    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.

    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.

    The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

    I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.


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