“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
“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.”
―
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
“The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice.”
―
Albert Einstein
“It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.”
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Albert Einstein
“The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives.”
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Albert Einstein
“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.”
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Albert Einstein
“If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
―
Albert Einstein
“We all know that light travels faster than sound. That's why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.”
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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 idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.”
―
Albert Einstein
“We are all life trying to live, among other life trying to live.”
―
Albert Einstein
“To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window.”
―
Albert Einstein
