“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 feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
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Albert Einstein
“Come si può mettere la Nona di Beethoven in un diagramma cartesiano? Ci sono delle realtà che non sono quantificabili. L'universo non è i miei numeri: è pervaso tutto dal mistero. Chi non ha il senso del mistero è un uomo mezzo morto.”
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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).”
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Albert Einstein
“Um ein tadelloses Mitglied einer Schafherde sein zu können, muß man vor allem ein Schaf sein.”
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Albert Einstein
“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.”
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Albert Einstein
“If someone can enjoy marching to music in rank and file, I can feel only contempt for him; he has received his large brain by mistake, a spinal cord would have been enough.”
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Albert Einstein
“Do you really believe that the moon isn’t there when nobody looks?”
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Albert Einstein
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
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Albert Einstein
“This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher"(when asked about completing his income tax form)”
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Albert Einstein
“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”
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Albert Einstein
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
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Albert Einstein
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
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Albert Einstein
“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - 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.”
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Albert Einstein