“The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
―
Albert Einstein
“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”
―
Albert Einstein
“When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.”
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Albert Einstein
“In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were [someone to] drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Have the courage to take your own thoughts
seriously, for they will shape you.”
―
Albert Einstein
“You don't have to understand the world. You just have to find your own way around in it.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray; quoted in: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann”
―
Albert Einstein
“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”
―
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
“Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”
―
Albert Einstein
