|
|
A to Z Albert Einstein Phrases |
|
|
A man should look for what is,
and not for what he thinks should be.
A perfection of means, and
confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
A person who never made a mistake
never tried anything new.
A question that sometimes drives
me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit
and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
All religions, arts and sciences
are branches of the same tree.
All that is valuable in human
society depends upon the opportunity for development
accorded the inxdividual.
All these primary impulses, not
easily described in words, are the springs of man's
actions.
An empty stomach is not a good
political adviser.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of
fools.
Any intelligent fool can make
things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch
of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the
opposite direction.
Any man who can drive safely
while kissing a pretty girl is simply
not giving the
kiss the attention it deserves.
Any man who reads too much and
uses his own brain too little falls
into lazy habits
of thinking.
Anyone who doesn't take truth
seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in
large ones either.
Anyone who has never made a
mistake has never tried anything new.
As far as I'm concerned, I prefer
silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
As far as the laws of mathematics
refer to reality, they are not certain,
and as far
as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Before God we are all equally
wise - and equally foolish.
Common sense is the collection of
prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Concern for man and his fate must
always form the chief interest of all technical
endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your
diagrams and equations.
Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in
my opinion,
to characterize our age.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics.
I can assure you mine are still greater.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten
what one has learned in school.
Everyone should be respected as an inxdividual, but no
one idolized.
Everything should be as simple as it is, but not
simpler.
Everything that can be counted does not necessarily
count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel
with their own hearts.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity
opinions which
differ from the prejudices of their social environment.
Most people are
even incapable of forming such opinions.
Force always attracts men of low morality.
God always takes the simplest way.
God does not play dice.
God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in
love.
Great spirits have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt
in awe, is as good as dead;
his eyes are closed.
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has
already earned my contempt.
He has been given a large brain by mistake,
since for him the spinal cord
would suffice.
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the
loathsome
nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how
passionately I hate them!
Human beings must have action; and they will make it
if they cannot find it.
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - this is a
somewhat new kind of religion.
I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I
am willing to fight for peace.
Nothing will end war unless the people
themselves refuse to go to war.
I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life
is best for everyone,
best both for the body and the mind.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the
objects of his creation
and is but a reflection of human frailty.
I do not believe in immortality of the inxdividual,
and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no
superhuman authority behind it.
I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards
good and punishes evil.
I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out
in a war fought with
the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people
of the earth will be killed.
I have just got a new theory of eternity.
I have no special talent. I am only passionately
curious.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be
fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth,
but delicious in the years of maturity.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
I shall never believe that God plays dice with the
world.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine
times, the conclusion is false.
The hundredth time I am right.
I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are
just details.
If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be
called research, would it?
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance
to the tailor.
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of
life's coming attractions.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
In matters of truth and justice, there is no
difference between large
and small problems, for issues concerning the
treatment of people are all the same.
In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of
sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
Information is not knowledge.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and
cease only at death.
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
Isn't it strange that I who have written only
unpopular books should be
such a popular fellow?
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the
stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology
has exceeded our humanity.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal
education.
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of
war is nothing but an act of murder.
It is only to the inxdividual that a soul is given.
It is strange to be known so universally and yet to
be so lonely.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in
creative expression and knowledge.
It should be possible to explain the laws of physics
to a barmaid.
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that
by acting on the human mind it has
overcome man's insecurity before
himself and before nature.
It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with
fear - that engendered religion.
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay
with problems longer.
Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most
beautiful gift.
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly
to what should be.
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for
tomorrow. The important thing
is not to stop questioning.
Let every man be respected as an inxdividual and no
man idolized.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take
you everywhere.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand
everything better.
Love is a better teacher than duty.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not
simpler.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's
events.
Morality is of the highest importance - but for us,
not for God.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are
essentially simple, and may,
as a rule, be expressed in a language
comprehensible to everyone.
Most people say that is it is the intellect which
makes a great scientist.
They are wrong: it is character.
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the
illimitable superior spirit who
reveals himself in the slight details we
are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the
measles of mankind.
Never do anything against conscience even if the
state demands it.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right;
a single experiment
can prove me wrong.
No problem can be solved from the same level of
consciousness that created it.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not
everything that counts can be counted.
Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of
exact prediction because
of the variety of factors in operation, not
because of any lack of order in nature.
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its
comprehensibility.
One strength of the communist system of the East is
that it has some of
the character of a religion and inspires the
emotions of a religion.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his
whole strength and soul can
be a true master. For this reason mastery
demands all of a person.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former.
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our
circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the whole of
nature and its beauty.
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be
achieved by understanding.
People love chopping wood. In this activity one
immediately sees results.
Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to
characterize our age.
Politics is for the present, but an equation is for
eternity.
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of
logical ideas.
Reading, after a certain age, xdiverts the mind too
much from its creative pursuits.
Any man who reads too much and uses his
own brain too little falls
into lazy habits of thinking.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very
persistent one.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to
earn one's living at it.
Science without religion is lame, religion without
science is blind.
Small is the number of people who see with their eyes
and think with their minds.
Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful
when one is more mature. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of
value.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of
a pathological criminal.
That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a
superior reasoning power,
which is revealed in the incomprehensible
universe, forms my idea of God.
The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only
rarely been successful
and then only for a short while.
The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in
life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that
genius has its limits.
The distinction between the past, present and future
is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
The environment is everything that isn't me.
The faster you go, the shorter you are.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all
fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my
talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest
number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number
of hypotheses or axioms.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the
income tax.
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather
than to rule.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
The man of science is a poor philosopher.
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates
the creative mind.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is
that it is comprehensible.
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
The only reason for time is so that everything
doesn't happen at once.
The only source of knowledge is experience.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my
education.
The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a
continual flight from wonder.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of
activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new
problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an
existing one.
The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by
lip service to an ideal.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your
sources.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but
imagination.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed
everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward
unparalleled catastrophe.
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
The whole of science is nothing more than a
refinement of everyday thinking.
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because
of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do
anything about it.
There are two ways to live: you can live as if
nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane
of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
There could be no fairer destiny for any physical
theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory
in which it lives on as a limiting case.
There is no logical way to the discovery of these
elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a
feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not
any simpler.
Time is what prevents everything from happening at
once.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard
old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks
real advance in science.
To the Master's honor all must turn, each
in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's
ground.
Too many of us look upon Americans as
dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is
reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
True art is characterized by an
irresistible urge in the creative artist.
True religion is real living; living with
all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.
Try not to become a man of success, but
rather try to become a man of value.
We can't solve problems by using the same
kind of thinking we used when we created them.
We cannot despair of humanity, since we
ourselves are human beings.
We cannot solve our problems with the
same thinking we used when we created them.
We shall require a substantially new
manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
We should take care not to make the
intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but
no personality.
We still do not know one thousandth of
one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of
character.
When I examine myself and my methods of
thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy
has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive
thinking.
When the solution is simple, God is
answering.
When you are courting a nice girl an hour
seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a
second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
Whoever is careless with the truth in
small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a
judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter
of the gods.
Without deep reflection one knows from
daily life that one exists for other people.
You ask me if I keep a notebook to record
my great ideas. I've only ever had one.
You can never solve a problem on the
level on which it was created.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein_10.html
(c) 2012
|
thx to Phrases.org.uk (c) 1985-2012 + © by 310-Mr.INTERNET 1994-2012
|