Albert Einstein Quotes (575 Quotes)

Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to destroy part or all of the planet...But it is not necessary to imagine the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the growing scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is prevented it is likely to bring destruction on a scale never before held possible, and even now hardly conceived, and that little civilization would survive it.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.

What guided Einstein was that, in his mid-twenties, he found the unknown intriguing. He felt compelled to comprehend what might have been intended for our universe by The Old One (as he referred to his notion of God). We are in the position, ... of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.

You can't blame gravity for falling in love.

If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research.

How strange is the lot of us mortals Each of us is here for a brief sojournfor what purpose we know not, though sometimes sense it. But we know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends

Any 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 ind

I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.

It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.

We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. And those who have an interest in keeping the machinery of war going are a very powerful body they will stop at nothing to make public opinion subservient to their murderous ends.

The relativity principle in connection with the basic Maxwellian equations demands that the mass should be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body light transfers mass. With radium there should be a noticeable diminution of mass. The idea

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow -- perhaps it all will.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

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.

Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honestgood will exert upon events in the political field.

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.

we can understand almost anything, but we can't understand how we understand

Force always attracts men of low morality.

The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.

This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.

The legs are the wheels of creativity.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

While it is true that an inherently free and scrupulous person may be destroyed, such an individual can never be enslaved or used as a blind tool

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 fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who know it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out can.

Why 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.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.

I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

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.

It is not the fruits of scientific research that elevate man and enrich his nature. but the urge to understand, the intellectual work, creative or receptive.

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

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.

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.