1. “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”
2. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”
3. “All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.”
4. ”A human being is a part of the 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, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.”
5. “A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.”
6. “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.”
7. "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
8. “A man's moral worth is not measured by what his religious beliefs are but rather by what emotional impulses he has received from Nature during his lifetime.”
9. "Any fool can know. The point is to understand."
10. "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
11. ”Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. “
12. ”Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
13. “Any power must be the enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under a Fascist or Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.”
14. “A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.”
15. “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
16. "A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?"
17. ”As punishment for my contempt for authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.”
18. “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.”
19. “A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy.”
20. “A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.”
21. "Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish."
22. “Body and soul are not two different things, but only two different ways of perceiving the same thing. Similarly, physics and psychology are only different attempts to link our experiences together by way of systematic thought.”
23. “But in physics I soon learned to scent out the paths that led to the depths, and to disregard everything else, all the many things that clutter up the mind, and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examination, whether one liked it or not.”
24. "Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen."
25. ”Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Humans beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.”
26. “Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors... Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”
27. “Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”
28. "Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets."
29. “Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.”
30. “Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
31. ”Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance.”
32. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”
33. “Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”
34. "Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
35. “Few is the number of those who think with their own mind and feel with their own heart.”
36. “For us physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion.”
37. “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
38. “God is a scientist, not a magician.”
39. "Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love."
40. “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.”
41. "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
42. “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.”
43. “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them! How vile and despicable seems war to me! I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.”
44. ”How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?”
45. “How long is a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on.”
46. “Human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.”
47. “Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements the inquiring constructive mind.”
48. "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
49. "I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the Earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored."
50. ”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.“
51. "If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants."
52. “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
53. “I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.”
54. “I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”
55. "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
56. “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
57. “I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.”
58. ”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.”
59. “If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree if independence still available under present circumstances.”
60. ”If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.”
61. ”If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”
62. “If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”
63. "If the possibility of the spiritual development of all individuals is to be secured, a second kind of outward freedom is necessary. The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit in general requires still another kind of freedom, which may be characterised as inward freedom. It is this freedom of the spirit which consists in the interdependence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices as well as from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy object for the individual."
64. “If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art.”
65. “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”
66. "I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple."
67. “I have just got a new theory of eternity.”
68. “I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”
69. “I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.”
70. “Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world.”
71. ”I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
72. “Information is not knowledge.”
73. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
74. "Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.”
75. “In light of knowledge attained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alterations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it.”
76. “In my experience, the best creative work is never done when one is unhappy.”
77. “In our time the military mentality is still more dangerous than formerly because the offensive weapons have become much more powerful than the defensive ones. Therefore it leads, by necessity, to preventive war. The general insecurity that goes hand in hand with this results in the sacrifice of the citizen's civil rights to the supposed welfare of the state. Political witch-hunting, controls of all sorts (e.g., control of teaching and research, of the press, and so forth) appear inevitable, and for this reason do not encounter that popular resistance, which, were it not for the military mentality, would provide a protection. A reappraisal of all values gradually takes place in so far as everything that does not clearly serve the utopian ends is regarded and treated as inferior.”
78. ”Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
79. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
80. “I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.”
81. "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him."
82. “I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. Bu t my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.”
83. ”It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
84. “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”
85. “It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.”
86. “It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.”
87. “It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”
88. "It is a miracle curiousity survives formal education."
89. “It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment.”
90. “It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.”
91. "It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely."
92. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”
93. “It is the theory that decides what we can observe.”
94. “It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.”
95. “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
96. “It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction in the name of which they can hate one another. Once it was religion. Now it is the State.”
97. “I. It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." Thus the meaning of the word "truth" varies according to whether we deal with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition, or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all. II. Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. III. This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza). IV. Denominational traditions I can only consider historically and psychologically; they have no other significance for me.”
98. “I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.”
99. “I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details.”
100. “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.”
101. “Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. If one asks the whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justifed merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as p owerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgements of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonst ration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.”
102. ”Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
103. “Logic will get you from A to B, Imagination will take you everywhere.”
104. “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
105. "Man seeks for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and lucid image of the world, and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image."
106. “Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”
107. “May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers."
108. ”Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”
109. "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
110. “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
111. “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
112. “Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.”
113. “Newton, forgive me.”
114. “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
115. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
116. "Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice, I can help the greatest of all causes - goodwill among men and peace on earth."
117. “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?”
118. ”Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized.”
119. "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."
120. "Of what significance is one's one existence, one is basically unaware. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? The bitter and the sweet come from outside. The hard from within, from one's own efforts. For the most part I do what my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn such respect and love for it."
121. “Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.”
122. “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.”
123. “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
124. “One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.”
125. “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.”
126. ”Our separation from each other is an illusion of consciousness.”
127. “Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntary and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own.”
128. "Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
129. “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. You cannot subjugate a nation forcibly unless you wipe out every man, woman, and child. Unless you wish to use such drastic measures, you must find a way of settling your disputes without resorting to arms.”
130. "Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age. "
131. “Physical concepts are the creation of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by our external world. In our endeavor to understand reality, we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He can see the hands move and hear it's ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious, he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he will never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observation. He will never be able to compare his pictures with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.”
132. “Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.”
133. “Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.”
134. ”Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.”
135. "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."
136. “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
137. “Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.”
138. “Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.”
139. “Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
140. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
141. "Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe."
142. ”Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.”
143. “Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely nearsighted man who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”
144. "Space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are modes in which we think."
145. “Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others...for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.”
146. “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
147. "That little word 'we' I mistrust and here's why:No man of another can say, 'He is I.'Behind all agreement lies something amissAll seeming accord cloaks a lurking abyss."
148. ”The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own efforts.”
149. "The distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, although a persistent one."
150. “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
151. “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”
152. “The faster you go, the shorter you are.”
153. "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."
154. “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 impenatrable 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 sent iment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself amoung profoundly religious men.”
155. “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.”
156. “The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.”
157. “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
158. “The hardest thing to understand is why we can understand anything at all.”
159. ”The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things.”
160. ”The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books --- a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
161. “The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.”
162. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
163. “The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.”
164. “The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.”
165. "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
166. “The joy of looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.”
167. “The main source of all technological achievements is the divine curiosity and playful drive of the tinkering and thoughtful researcher, as much as it is the creative imagination of the inventor.”
168. “The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.”
169. "The more I study science, the more I believe in God."
170. “The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it.”
171. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
172. “The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”
173. “The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.”
174. “The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy.”
175. “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
176. "The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."
177. "The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
178. ”There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
179. “The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man.”
180. ”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.”
181. "There remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion."
182. "The search for truth is more precious than its possession."
183. ”The truth of a theory is in your mind, not in your eyes.”
184. "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
185. “There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.”
186. "There is only one important question: Is the universe friendly?"
187. “The relativity principle in connection with the basic Maxwellian equations demands that the mass should be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body; light transfers mass. With radium there should be a noticeable diminution of mass. The idea is amusing and enticing; but whether the Almighty is laughing at it and is leading me up the garden path - that I cannot know.”
188. “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.”
189. “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism....”
190. "The Rules of Work: 1. Out of clutter, find simplicity. 2. From discord, find harmony. 3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."
191. “There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation.”
192. “The scientists' religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
193. ”The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”
194. “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
195. ”These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward.”
196. “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
197. "The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."
198. “Time is what is indicated by a clock.”
199. “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.”
200. “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.”
201. “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
202. “To understand the world one must not be worrying about one's self.”
203. "Truth is what stands the test of experience."
204. ”Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”
205. “Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.”
206. “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
207. “We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from our desires and our fears. Intuition tells us that that is true also of our fellows and of the higher animals. We all try to escape pain and death, w hile we seek what is pleasant. We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organised that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation. At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on. All these primary impulses, not easi ly described in words, are the springs of man's actions. All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us. Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much aloke in them and in us. The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolical devices. Thought is the organising factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions. In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts. But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.”
208. "We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books . It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranges and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
209. “We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.”
210. “We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.”
211. "We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know."
212. “We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”
213. "What if we are all just random thoughts within the mind of God."
214. ”What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. 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 impenatrable 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 amoung profoundly religious men. The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.”
215. “What science strives for is an utmost acuteness and clarity of concepts as regards their mutual relation and their correspondence to sensory data.”
216. “Watch the stars and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn, Each in its track, without a sound, Forever tracing Newton's ground.”
217. “When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn't realize that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.”
218. “When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and graviton have no separate existence from matter.”
219. “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
220. “When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.”
221. ”When the solution is simple, God is answering. God does not play dice with the universe. God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
222. “When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.”
223. “Where there is love there is no question.”
224. “Where the world ceases to be the stage for personal hopes and desires, where we, as free beings, behold it in wonder, to question and to comtemplate, there we enter the realm of art and of science. If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose interrelationships are not accessible to our conscious thought but are intutitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art. Common to both is the devotion to something beyond the personal, removed from the arbitrary.”
225. "With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon."
226. ”Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.”
227. “X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.”
228. “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.”
229. “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
230. “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.”
231. “You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity...No we must not You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball..”
