Albert Einstein Quotes

Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Beyond the realms of what we see, into the regions or the unexplored limited only by our imaginations.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.

Creo que la negativa al servicio militar por razones de conciencia, en caso que fiera hecha por cincuenta mil soldados, sería un poder irresistible. El individuo solo no puede obtener mucho. Aunque tampoco puede ser deseable que justamente los seres de más valor sean objeto de la destrucción por parte de esa maquinaria detrás de la cual se esconden tres grandes poderes: Imbecilidad, Temor y Codicia.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

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.

ACADEMIC CHAIRS ARE MANY, but wise and noble teachers are few; lecture-rooms are numerous and large, but the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

The laws of gravity cannot be held responcible for people falling in love.

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of other men — above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving.

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.

- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray; quoted in: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann

Have the courage to take your own thoughts
seriously, for they will shape you.