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[Note:
This list of Einstein quotes was being forwarded around the Internet in
e-mail, so I decided to put it on my web page. I'm afraid I can't vouch
for its authenticity, tell you where it came from, who compiled the
list, who Kevin Harris is, or anything like that. Still, the quotes are
interesting and enlightening.]
Collected
Quotes from Albert Einstein
- "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."
- "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 at it."
- "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 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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "The important thing is not to stop
questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
- "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."
- "Two things are infinite: the universe
and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
- "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."
- "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."
- "The fear of death is the most
unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone
who's dead."
- "Too many of us look upon Americans as
dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated
thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
- "Heroism on command, senseless violence,
and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism --
how passionately I hate them!"
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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 a poor way if he had to be
restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
- "The further the spiritual evolution of
mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to
genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear
of death, and blind faith, but through striving after 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, 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."
- "One had to cram all this stuff into
one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This
coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the
final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems
distasteful to me for an entire year."
- "...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."
- "He who joyfully marches to music rank
and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large
brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely
suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at
once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how
despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than
be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing
under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
- "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."
- "Not everything that counts can be
counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging
in Einstein's office at Princeton)
Copyright:
Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)