“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
“My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”
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Albert Einstein
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”
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Albert Einstein
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
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Albert Einstein
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”
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Albert Einstein
“What a deep [trust] in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work!”
―
Albert Einstein
“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”
―
Albert Einstein
“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.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens.”
―
Albert Einstein
