Albert Einstein Quotes

789 Sourced Quotes

As for the search for truth, I know from my own painful searching, with its many blind alleys, how hard it is to take a reliable step, be it ever so small, towards the understanding of that which is truly significant.

Albert Einstein
But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.

Albert Einstein
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.

Albert Einstein
There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe: (1) the world as a unity dependent on humanity; (2) the world as a reality independent of the human factor.

Albert Einstein
But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

Albert Einstein
Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.

Albert Einstein
I think we have to safeguard ourselves against people who are a menace to others, quite apart from what may have motivated their deeds.

Albert Einstein
The bitter and sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own efforts.

Albert Einstein
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

Albert Einstein
We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant.

Albert Einstein
I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.

Albert Einstein
A man's moral worth is not measured by what his religious beliefs are but rather by what emotional impulses he has received from Nature during his lifetime.

Albert Einstein
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.

Albert Einstein
A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.
Sometimes quoted as: We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

Albert Einstein
Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized.

Albert Einstein
The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence — these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

Albert Einstein
A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order.

Albert Einstein
One has to divide one's time between politics and our equations. Equations are much more important to me, because politics is for the present, while... an equation is for eternity.

Albert Einstein
There is only one road to human greatness: through the school of hard knocks.

Albert Einstein
In order to be a perfect member of a flock of sheep, one has to be, foremost, a sheep.

Albert Einstein
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future.

Albert Einstein
This is the reason why all attempts to obtain a deeper knowledge of the foundations of physics seem doomed to me unless the basic concepts are in accordance with general relativity from the beginning. This situation makes it difficult to use our empirical knowledge, however comprehensive, in looking for the fundamental concepts and relations of physics, and it forces us to apply free speculation to a much greater extent than is presently assumed by most physicists.

Albert Einstein
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem—in my opinion—to characterize our age.

Albert Einstein
During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.

Albert Einstein
My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

Albert Einstein