“Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me.
- Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp”
―
Albert Einstein
“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”
―
Albert Einstein
“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”
―
Albert Einstein
“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I prefer to make up my own quotes and attribute them to very smart people, so that I can use them to win arguments”
―
Albert Einstein
“Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
―
Albert Einstein
“It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives.”
―
Albert Einstein
