Albert Einstein Quotes

789 Sourced Quotes

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. … Don't stop to marvel.

Albert Einstein
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein
The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.

Albert Einstein
I became more and more convinced that even nature could be understood as a relatively simple mathematical structure.

Albert Einstein
Reading after a certain age diverts 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, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

Albert Einstein
I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play.

Albert Einstein
One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires.

Albert Einstein
There has been an earth for a little more than a billion years. As for the question of the end of it I advise: Wait and see!

Albert Einstein
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.

Albert Einstein
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

Albert Einstein
Matter is real to my senses, but they aren't trustworthy. If Galileo or Copernicus had accepted what they saw, they would never have discovered the movement of the earth and planets.

Albert Einstein
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent cause of natural events.

Albert Einstein
I am very happy with my new home in friendly America and in the liberal atmosphere of Princeton.

Albert Einstein
The God Spinoza revered is my God, too: I meet Him everyday in the harmonious laws which govern the universe. My religion is cosmic, and my God is too universal to concern himself with the intentions of every human being. I do not accept a religion of fear; My God will not hold me responsible for the actions that necessity imposes. My God speaks to me through laws.

Albert Einstein
Dear mother! Today a joyful notice. H. A. Lorentz has telegraphed me that the English expeditions have really proven the deflection of light at the sun.

Albert Einstein
The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Free-thinker mentality.

Albert Einstein
Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.

Albert Einstein
Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.

Albert Einstein
For the most part we humans live with the false impression of security and a feeling of being at home in a seemingly trustworthy physical and human environment. But when the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we are like shipwrecked people on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whither they are drifting. But once we fully accept this, life becomes easier and there is no longer any disappointment.

Albert Einstein
At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on.

Albert Einstein
If a body releases the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass is decreased by L/V2

Albert Einstein
All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.

Albert Einstein
It is open to every man to choose the direction of his striving; and also every man may draw comfort from Lessing's fine saying, that the search for truth is more precious than its possession.

Albert Einstein
I have only two rules which I regard as principles of conduct. The first is: Have no rules. The second is: Be independent of the opinion of others.

Albert Einstein
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.

Albert Einstein
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.

Albert Einstein
The effort to strive for truth has to precede all
other efforts.

Albert Einstein
This freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge, a consideration of much practical import. In the first instance it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population. Such an ideal of external liberty can never be fully attained but must be sought unremittingly if scientific thought, and philosophical and creative thinking in general, are to be advanced as far as possible.

Albert Einstein
Free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind. There is no room in this for the divinization of a nation, of a class, let alone of an individual. Are we not all children of one father, as it is said in religious language?

Albert Einstein