Quotes by Albert Einstein

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The desire to be noticed and appreciated is a healthy motive (emulation), but the desire to be recognized as the best, the strongest, the smartest of your fellows easily leads to an excessively selfish complacency that can harm both the individual as well as the community.

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We must beware of impressing upon the youth the idea that success is the purpose of life, for a man who is successful usually receives from his fellows a larger share than is proportionate to the services he has been able to render. A man's value lies in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

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Ever since the mathematicians took up the theory of relativity, I for one no longer understand it.

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The theory cannot be demonstrated by experiments, however many there may be; but a single experiment is enough to disprove it.

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There is no doubt that there is an important grain of truth in quantum mechanics... Although I do not believe that quantum mechanics is the starting point for finding the [future theoretical] basis, any more than it is possible to start from thermodynamics... to get to the basics of mechanics.

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Do not deify the intellect. He has strong muscles but no face.

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Our mathematical difficulties do not bother God. He integrates empirically.

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Math is the perfect way to screw yourself up.

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The mathematician is capable of something, but not of what is desired to be obtained from him at a given moment.

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We don't just want to find out how nature is ordered (and how natural phenomena occur), but in order to achieve our seemingly utopian and daring goal we need to find out why nature is the way it is, and not otherwise. In this scientists find their greatest satisfaction.

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Common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen.

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Sometimes we pay more for what we get for free.

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Mathematical laws that have anything to do with the real world are unreliable; and the mathematical laws of trust have nothing to do with the real world.

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No end can be so great as to justify unworthy means employed to achieve it.

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The life of each individual has meaning only if it helps him to make other people's lives more beautiful and better. Life is sacred, that is, a supreme value to which all other values ​​are subordinate.

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The only thing that bothers me about studying is my education.

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No problem can be solved at the same level at which it came into being.

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Not everything of value can be valued, and not everything that is valued has value.

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I would not recommend forming a team of inventors, because it is difficult to identify a true inventor; I believe that a society of drones running away from work can result from such an attempt.

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I never think about the future. He comes quite quickly.

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Man begins to live only when he succeeds in overcoming himself.

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Man can find the meaning of life, no matter how short and dangerous it may be, only by devoting himself to society.

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Man is a part of a whole, a part limited in time and space, of the whole we call the Universe. He feels himself, together with his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the whole world, which is an illusion, an optical lie. This illusion has become a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our own desires and attachment to a narrow circle of people dear to us. Our task is to break free from this prison, extending our domain to every living being, to the whole world in all its splendor. No one is capable of carrying such a task to completion, but the very attempts to achieve this goal are part of the liberation and grounding of inner confidence.

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Only those who undertake absurd attempts can achieve the impossible.

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There is an amazing opportunity to master mathematics without understanding its essence.

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The strength of the mind cannot replace the finesse of the fingers.

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The secret of creativity lies in the ability to hide your sources.

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The most difficult and incomprehensible thing in the world is income tax.

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The most inconceivable thing in the world is that the world can be understood.

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Reality is largely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

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A practical profession is generally a salvation for people like me: the academic career forces a young man to give unceasing scientific production, and only strong natures can resist the temptation to make superficial analysis.

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Before God we are all equally wise; or equally stupid.

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Everyone knows from childhood that one or the other is impossible. However, there is always an ignoramus who does not know this. It is he who makes a discovery.

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In science, all ideas were born out of a dramatic conflict between reality and our attempts to understand it.

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Everything should be described as simply as possible, but not simpler than possible.

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Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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In physics, substantial success has often been achieved by drawing an analogy between unrelated events.

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Wireless telegraphy can be easily understood. An ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat: pull its tail in New York and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless telegraph is the same thing, but without the cat.

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God is a gaseous vertebrate.

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The most important thing in man's life is what he thinks and how he thinks, and not what he does or feels.

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God does not play dice.

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It is a great mistake to think that a sense of duty and compulsion can contribute to learning the joy of looking and searching.

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There are only two infinite things: the Universe and stupidity. Although, regarding the Universe I'm not too sure.

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If I devoted myself to science, guided not only by purely external motives, such as the making of money or the satisfaction of my own ambition, and not because (at least, not for this reason alone) I considered it a kind of sport, an exercise of the mind, which gives me pleasure, then a question must represent me as a supporter of the ardent interest of science: what end must and must the science to which I have devoted myself set before me? How true are his results today? What is so significant in them and what depends on its accidental development?

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If the theory of relativity is confirmed, then the German will say: I am German, and the French: I am a citizen of the world; if, however, my theory is rejected, the French will declare me a German, and the Germans, a Jew.

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If you will not sin against reason, you cannot, in general, achieve anything.

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For us staunch physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is no more than an illusion, albeit a very haunting one.

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Gravity cannot be responsible for those whom love brings down.

"Christians who live to be pleasing to God are so spiritually attractive that people want to know what makes them stand apart."

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Find simplicity in the mess, harmony in the chaos. There is always opportunity in the midst of difficulties.

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Learn from yesterday, live for today and hope for tomorrow. Most importantly, though, don't stop asking.

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The question that sometimes confuses me: am I crazy or is everyone else?

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Our destiny will be what we deserve.

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An infinite number of experiments cannot prove me right, but a single experiment can prove me wrong.

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A miracle is an exception to the laws, so where there are no laws, there can be no exceptions, i.e. miracles.

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There is only one reason for time: everything cannot happen at the same time.

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God takes no chances.

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God is cunning, but never malicious.

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Common sense is a collection of prejudices gathered for the age of eighteen.

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Reality is just an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

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I'm not particularly talented, just passionately curious.

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We don't have to understand the world; it is enough to navigate it.

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Compared to reality, all our science is primitive and childish - and yet this is our greatest value.

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Don't worry if you had difficulties with math! I can assure you that my difficulties are even greater than yours.

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How strange is our situation, that of the children of the Earth! Everyone is only here for a short visit. He doesn't know why, but sometimes he thinks he does.

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Everything should be made as simple as possible, but nothing simpler.

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The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who commit evil, but because of those who stand idly by.

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War should not be made more humane, but abolished.

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How bleak is the age in which it is easier to destroy an atom than a prejudice!

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Let's not talk about great discoveries or progress until there is a single unhappy little child in the world.

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Don't try to be a successful person, try to be valuable!

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The Heisenberg-Bohr appeasement philosophy - or religion? - he points out that he provides the believers with a soft cushion from which it is not easy to scare them. So let them lie. However, this religion has little effect on me...

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Hold your hand on the hot stove for a minute, you'll see, it will feel like an hour. Talk to a pretty woman for an hour as if it were just a minute. Well, that's relativity.

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In so far as the laws of mathematics apply to reality, they are not certain; however, if they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

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It is hard to find a serious mind without an individual religious worldview. But this religiosity is different from that of the naive man. The latter expect benefit from God's care, they fear his wrath; it is a sublimation of a feeling that resembles the relationship between father and child.

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Organized religion can regain some of the authority it lost in the previous war if it devotes itself to mobilizing the energy and goodwill of its followers against growing narrow-mindedness.

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We must base our actions on the ever-present awareness that people are not free in their thinking, emotions, and actions, but only bound by their motives as the stars are in their movement.

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I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes His creatures, or has a will like we experience within ourselves. I cannot and will not accept a person who survives his physical death; or to allow souls weak from fear or absurd egoism to cherish such thoughts.

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A man thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment accept the idea of ​​a being who intervenes in the course of events. The religion of fear makes no sense to him, and the social and moral religion just as little. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that human actions are determined by external and internal needs, so that man cannot be held responsible in God's eyes any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the movements he performs. (...) A man's moral behavior must be based on sympathy, upbringing, social relations and necessities; no religious basis is necessary.

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I believe in Spinoza's God, who manifests himself in the harmony of all existence, and not in the God who cares about the actions and destiny of men.

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I cannot conceive of a personal God who directly influences the actions of individuals... My religion is a humble admiration of an infinitely superior spirit. This spirit manifests itself in small things so that we can understand its reality.

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Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of our sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems empty and meaningless to me.

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Every true investigator of nature feels a religious reverence, because he cannot imagine that he is the first to have conceived the extremely fragile threads which are attached to his perception.

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The researcher is driven by a sense of universal reasoning. His religious sentiment takes form in the enchanting admiration of the harmony of natural laws, which reflects a superior intelligence compared to which the methodical thinking and actions of mankind are completely insignificant. This, no doubt, is similar to that which has possessed the religious minds of all ages.

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A religious person is sincere in the sense that he does not doubt the existence and importance of superhuman objects and goals that do not presuppose rational foundations, but are not suitable for them either.

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The current main source of conflict between religion and science stems from the conception of God with a human face.

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Doesn't philosophy look like it was written with honey? It looks wonderful if you just glance at it, but if you look at it again, it all disappears. And there is nothing left but the smear.

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I was deeply religious, but that came to an abrupt end when I was 12. By reading many popular science books, I soon came to believe that many Bible stories could not be true. This realization made me suspicious of all authority, and this attitude has followed me throughout my life.

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I am a deeply religious unbeliever; it is a new kind of religion.

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I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human matter, over which there is no superhuman power.

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The theory of God with a human face is foreign to me and can even be considered naive.

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As for God, my position is agnostic. I am convinced that a firm awareness of the primary importance of moral principles, by which life is better and nobler, does not require a legislator, especially not one who bases his laws on rewards or punishments.

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Maybe we can accomplish greater things than Jesus, because what is written about him in the Bible is poetically colored.

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The more the religious worldview of humanity develops, the more it seems that sincere religiosity does not lie in fear of life and death, in blind faith, but in the desire to acquire rational knowledge.

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In the struggle for moral good, church doctrines must give up the image of God with a human face. It also means that they must give up this kind of instillation of hope and fear, which in the past gave enormous power to the hands of the priests.

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Someone has time for either science or family, but not both.

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Peace cannot be maintained by violent means; can only be achieved through understanding.

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Love brings much more joy than the suffering of longing.

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In fact, it is a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet completely stifled the sacred curiosity of research. In addition to watering, this delicate little flower needs freedom the most.

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If a new theory does not start from a concrete picture that is easy to understand even for children, then it is probably worthless.

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A happy person is too content with the present to think much about the future.

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The best things in life are when you see connections clearly. This can only be denied in a very depressed, nihilistic mood.

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Human beings can live a valuable and harmonious life only if they are able - within the limits of human nature - to free themselves from constantly striving to satisfy their desires of a material nature. The real goal is to increase the intellectual values ​​of society.

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Where there is love, there is no cheating.

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I am convinced that no amount of wealth in the world can move humanity forward (...). Money attracts only the profiteers and inevitably leads to abuse.

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I consider the main task of the state to protect the individual and give him the opportunity to develop into a creative person. Let the state be our servant, and not us the slaves of the state. This commandment is violated by the state when it forces us to perform military and war service; whereas the aim and result of this serf service is the destruction of the people of other countries, or the prevention of their freedom of development. Let us only make sacrifices for the state that benefit the free development of human individuals.

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All scientific theories, apart from mathematical formalism, should be so simple that even a child can understand them.

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Being you to me fills me with pride and makes me happy just thinking about you. But I will be twice as happy if I can finally hug you again and see those loving eyes that shine only for me, and if I can kiss those sweet little lips of yours that tremble just for me.

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If a blind beetle is crawling on the surface of a crooked tree branch, it does not realize that the path it is taking is actually crooked. And I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn't.

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You cannot prepare for war and peace at the same time.

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Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

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Extending life artificially is so tasteless. I did what was my job here. Now it's time to go. Then I'd rather leave elegantly.

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Nature has only shown us the lion's tail. But I have no doubt that the lion is there, even if you can't see it all at once.

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You can only invent really new things when you are young. After that, he is too experienced, too famous (...) and too stupid.

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I am a determinist who is forced to pretend that free will exists because if I want to live in a civilized society I must behave responsibly. (...) I have no control over the processes, primarily mysterious glands where Nature produces the essence of life. Henry Ford would presumably call this an inner voice, Socrates a daimon, but both tell us the same thing in their own language: the human will is not free.

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The more successful quantum theory becomes, the more stupid it all seems to me.

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We are in the position of a small child who enters a huge library filled with countless books written in different languages. The child knows that someone had to write those books. But how, is unimaginable to him. He does not understand the languages ​​in which the books were written. He vaguely suspects some mystical rule in the arrangement of the books, but he doesn't know what it is.

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Great minds have always provoked opposition from mediocre minds. For the mediocre mind is incapable of understanding one who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices, but speaks his own opinion boldly and honestly.

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Dear Posterity! If you haven't become more just, more peace-loving and generally more sensible than we are (were) - well, then let the devil take you away.

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If Euclid did not succeed in arousing youthful enthusiasm in someone, then he was not born to be a scientific thinker.

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The ancient Chinese were right. They said, "Never do anything!"

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Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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The greatest art of teaching is awakening the joy of creation and recognition.

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A god who rewards and punishes his creations; I can't imagine someone who has a will, someone who lives outside of us. In fact, I can't even think of an individual who would survive his physical death: no matter how much they nurture this idea - out of fear or ridiculous egotism, the weak-minded. For me, the mystery of the eternity of life, the awareness and guesswork of the wonderful structure of the future, and the humble effort to understand even the tiniest part of the reason manifested in nature are enough.

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I do not respect the man who can march with pleasure in line to the music; this man got his brain only by mistake, since the spinal cord would have been completely sufficient for him.

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The autocratic system of coercion - according to my conviction - degenerates in a short time, because violence always attracts the morally inferior and, according to my conviction, it is a rule that genius tyrants are succeeded by thieves.

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Researching the meaning and purpose of our own existence or the existence of living beings in general - from an objective point of view - has always seemed pointless to me.

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I absolutely do not believe in the freedom of man - in the philosophical sense. Man acts not only under the compulsion of external influences, but also under the influence of internal necessities.

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In the case of politics, and what's more, religious leaders too, it is very often very doubtful whether they have done more good or bad.

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There are many departments, but wise and noble teachers are rare. There are many great classrooms, but few young men who honestly thirst for truth and justice. Nature gives many gifts, but it rarely produces delicious ones.

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Politics is for the present, but the equation is for an eternity.

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Pleasure and entertainment have never seemed to me to be ends in themselves (I call this ethical base the ideal of the pig herd). My ideals, which floated in front of my eyes and always filled me with cheerful zest for life: goodness, beauty, truth.

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I am almost ashamed to live in such peace while others struggle and suffer.

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Originally, I really wanted to become an engineer, but the idea of ​​using my creativity to do things that serve the practical side of everyday life, and doing it all out of mere desire for profit, was simply unbearable for me. I think thinking should be cultivated for its own sake, just like music!

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Life would become unbearably boring if we did not try to decipher the secrets that God has hidden from us.

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Anyone who engages in scientific research cannot escape the conviction that in what we call the laws of nature, some kind of spirit is manifested. It is an immeasurably superior spirit than the human intellect, and man should feel humble before it with his modest abilities.

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Thoughtless respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

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Nationalism is a childhood disease, the measles of humanity.

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Everything that is truly great and inspiring was created by an individual who was free to work.

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Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better!

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For me, the word God is nothing more than the expression and product of human frailty, and the Bible is undoubtedly a collection of respectable, yet primitive legends, which are also rather childish. No matter how sophisticated it is, no explanation can convince you otherwise.

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If the Moon, when it travels its eternal course around the Earth, were blessed with self-awareness, convinced that it is setting its course of its own good will... in the same way, a Being blessed with greater insight and more perfect intelligence, observing man and his actions, would smile at that human illusion that we act according to our own free will.

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The real sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.

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Now I know why so many people like to cut wood. You can always see the results of this work immediately.

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The world's greatest mathematical discovery is compound interest.

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Learn the rules of the game, then you just have to play - better than everyone else, of course.

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Anyone who decides to set out as a judge of Truth and Knowledge can be sure to be shipwrecked in the overwhelming storm of the gods' laughter.

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I talk to everyone in the same way, the garbage man as well as the president of the university.

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The most basic ideas of science are fundamentally simple and, as a rule, can be formulated in a language that anyone can understand.

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In order to survive and achieve higher goals, humanity definitely needs a new way of thinking.

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I do not believe in a personal God, and I have never hidden this view of mine, but have always expressed it clearly. If there is anything in me that can be called religious, it is the boundless admiration that the structure of our world awakens in me, our world as far as our science can reveal it.

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The discovery of the nuclear chain reaction need bring mankind no closer to destruction than the invention of the match.

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Only the life we ​​live for others is worth living.

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I never worry about the future. He always comes too early.

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Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is finite. Imagination embraces the whole world.

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Gravity is not to blame for people falling in love.

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The secret of creativity is that you are good at hiding your sources.

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He who cannot wonder and shudder in the mysterious sanctuary of life is like a dead man whose eyes are closed.

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Two things in the world are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. Although the first one I'm not sure.

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If we take success in life as A, then A=X+Y+Z. X is work, Y is play, and Z is to shut up.

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What really matters is intuition.

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The most beautiful thing that can be given to a person is the mystery of life.

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Smart people solve problems and geniuses prevent them.

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Anyone who has never made a mistake has probably never tried anything new.

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If I were only interested in familiar things, I would have gone to be a locksmith.

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I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will certainly be fought with sticks and stones.

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Imagination is everything. A snapshot into the future events of life.

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What you can't explain simply, you don't quite understand.

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The joy of seeing and understanding is nature's greatest gift.

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Let everyone judge according to his own opinion, on the basis of his own readings, but not on what others tell him.

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Science is a great thing if you don't have to make a living out of it.

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Time is not what it seems. Not only does it move in one direction, but the future and the past exist in it at the same time.

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If God created the world, it was certainly not his main concern to make it understandable to us.

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We call it random when our calculations fail.

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Life is like riding a bike. If you want to keep your balance, you have to keep moving.

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What really interests me is how much freedom God had in creating the world.

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People flatter me until I make them uncomfortable. But if I try to serve goals that are unpleasant to them, they immediately switch to cursing and slandering in order to protect their interests. And the unsympathetic mostly hide in their cowardice.

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In a country - with the help of newspapers - in two weeks, the unjudgmental masses can be brought to such a state of rage and indignation that people become willing to dress up as soldiers and kill themselves for the undeserved goals of certain interested parties. Accordingly, there is no shortage of prophets predicting the imminent destruction of our culture. I am not one of those pessimists; I believe in a better future.

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The most beautiful thing we can deserve is the search for the secret of life. This is the basic feeling that is present at the cradle of true art and science. Anyone who doesn't know this, who can't be amazed, is - so to speak - dead, and his eyes have gone out.

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If someone is looking for truth and legality, he cannot distinguish between small and big problems. A person who does not take the truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in big matters either.

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The only thing incomprehensible about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

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What is the meaning of our existence, and what is the meaning of the life of living beings at all? To answer this question is to be religious.

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I never teach my students, I just try to create the conditions in which they can learn.

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Loneliness is painful when you are young, but charming when you are more mature.

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Play is the best way to research.

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People generally don't like to attribute cleverness to others. At most to the enemy.

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The past is an evil amphibian. To our senses, he is lost and dead once and for all, but his presence and indestructibility persist tenaciously in our memory.

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The difference between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if it is so stubborn.

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Development requires two things: tireless perseverance and the ability to be able to sow something in which we have invested a lot of time and work.

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I wonder if God laughs at me jokingly leading me astray.

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Ever since the mathematicians attacked the theory of relativity, I haven't understood it myself.