“To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind...
to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein (1929)”
―
Albert Einstein
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shpwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Have the courage to take your own thoughts
seriously, for they will shape you.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I am not more gifted than the average human being. If you know anything about history, you would know that is so--what hard times I had in studying and the fact that I do not have a memory like some other people do… I am just more curious than the average person and I will not give up on a problem until I have found the proper solution. This is one of my greatest satisfactions in life--solving problems--and the harder they are, the more satisfaction do I get out of them. Maybe you could consider me a bit more patient in continuing with my problem than is the average human being. Now, if you understand what I have just told you, you see that it is not a matter of being more gifted but a matter of being more curious and maybe more patient until you solve a problem.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind.”
―
Albert Einstein
“A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties – this knowledge, this feeling … that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.”
―
Albert Einstein
“It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce the new ideas.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense... Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humour its due.”
―
Albert Einstein
“No man or Genie on earth had "created" anything, we merely assembled God's Atoms, by learning it's properties, with his aid, so if anyone said that we had "invented" anything - he had Invented a lie; an unwise man.... thinks we have created an atom.”
―
Albert Einstein