“In two weeks the sheeplike masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed, for the sake of the sordid ends of a few interested parties.”
―
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 only men who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worth while.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).”
―
Albert Einstein
“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Of all the communities available to us, there is not one I would want to devote myself to except for the society of the true seekers, which has very few living members at any one time.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Hay una fuerza motriz más poderosa que el vapor, la electricidad y la energía atómica. Esa fuerza es la voluntad”
―
Albert Einstein
“I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!”
―
Albert Einstein
“I am thankful to all those who said NO to me. It's because of them, I did it myself”
―
Albert Einstein
“I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music”
―
Albert Einstein
