“This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!”
―
Albert Einstein
“Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count.”
―
Albert Einstein
“For an idea that does not first seem insane, there is no hope.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Still there are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being.”
―
Albert Einstein
“That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
―
Albert Einstein
“This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.
―
Albert Einstein
“Intelligent life on other planets? I'm not even sure there is on earth!”
―
Albert Einstein
“It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine—each was discovered by one man.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. It does not mean that everything in life is relative.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray; quoted in: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann”
―
Albert Einstein
