“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.”
―
Albert Einstein
“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The best that Gauss has given us was likewise an exclusive production. If he had not created his geometry of surfaces, which served Riemann as a basis, it is scarcely conceivable that anyone else would have discovered it. I do not hesitate to confess that to a certain extent a similar pleasure may be found by absorbing ourselves in questions of pure geometry.”
―
Albert Einstein
“Learn to be
happy through the good fortunes and joys of your friends and not through senseless quarrels. If you allow these natural feelings to blossom within you, your every burden will seem lighter or more bearable to you, you will find your own way through patience, and you will spread joy everywhere.”
―
Albert Einstein
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
―
Albert Einstein
“We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we are born.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.”
―
Albert Einstein
“We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”
―
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
“The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer.”
―
Albert Einstein
“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.”
―
Albert Einstein
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
―
Albert Einstein