“MY DEAR CHILDREN: I rejoice to see you before me today, happy youth of a sunny and fortunate land. Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labor in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common. If you always keep that in mind you will find a meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude toward other nations and ages.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”
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Albert Einstein
“Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”
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Albert Einstein
“I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.”
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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.”
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Albert Einstein
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
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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.”
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Albert Einstein
“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.”
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Albert Einstein
“Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.”
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Albert Einstein
“It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine—each was discovered by one man.”
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Albert Einstein
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
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Albert Einstein
“When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being.”
―
Albert Einstein
“De werkelijkheid is louter illusie, maar wel een hardnekkige.”
―
Albert Einstein
