Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and moreviolent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to movein the opposite direction."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
"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."
"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
"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 atit."
"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 integratesempirically."
"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathologicalcriminal."
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it iscomprehensible."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when wecreated them."
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned inschool."
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its ownreason for existing."
"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mineare 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 sureabout the the universe."
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, asfar as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledgeis shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IVwill be fought with sticks and stones."
"In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, aboveall, be a sheep."
"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no riskof accident forsomeone who's dead."
"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruellibel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense thatgoes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
"No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going toexplain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biologicalphenomenon as first love?"
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitablesuperior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are ableto perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
"Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and ourequations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics areonly a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way ofthinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. Ifonly I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition frommediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does notthoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly andcourageously uses his intelligence."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is thesource of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is astranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is asgood 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 apoor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of rewardafter death."
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain itseems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through thefear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through strivingafter 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, knowthat the distinction between past, present, and future is only astubbornly persistent illusion."
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull histail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understandthis? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, theyreceive them there. The only difference
is that there is no cat."
"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for theexaminations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion hadsuch a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed thefinal examination, I found the consideration of any scientificproblems distasteful
to me for an entire year."
"...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science isescape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness,from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely temperednature longs to escape from the personal
life into the world of objectiveperception and thought."
"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has alreadyearned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake,since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgraceto civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism atcommand,
how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoblewar is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so basean action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of waris nothing but an act of murder."
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a partlimited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts andfeelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of opticaldelusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind
of prison forus, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a fewpersons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from thisprison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all livingcreatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that canbe counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

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