“Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?”
―
Albert Einstein
“I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking”
―
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
“Communities tend to be guided less than individuals by conscience and a sense of responsibility. How much misery does this fact cause mankind! It is the source of wars and every kind of oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs and bitterness.”
―
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
“A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order.”
―
Albert Einstein
“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
―
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
“In the matter of physics, the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds.”
―
Albert Einstein
“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.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
―
Albert Einstein
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
―
Albert Einstein
“The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives.”
―
Albert Einstein
