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On Knowledge:
- "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."
- "The only real valuable thing is intuition."
- "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
- "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
- "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own
reason for existing."
His Understanding of the World:
- "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
- "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
- "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
- "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
- "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
- "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
- "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."
- "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not
sure about the the universe."
- "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."
- "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can
be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)
On People and Life:
- "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
- "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
- "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
- "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
- "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak
minds."
- "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
On Math and Science and Education:
- "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living
at it."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "...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."
- "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S
relativity."