Albert Einstein Quotes

788 Sourced Quotes

It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things. Kepler's marvelous achievement is a particularly fine example of the truth that knowledge cannot spring from experience alone, but only from the comparison of the inventions of the mind with observed fact.

Albert Einstein
Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perennially rejuvenated illusions.

Albert Einstein
It is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way.

Albert Einstein
I believe the main task of the spirit is to free man from his ego.

Albert Einstein
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

Albert Einstein
Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him.

Albert Einstein
Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.

Albert Einstein
When I was young, I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.

Albert Einstein
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?

Albert Einstein
What distinguishes the language of science from language as we ordinarily understand the word?... What science strives for is an utmost acuteness and clarity of concepts as regards their mutual relation and their correspondence to sensory data.

Albert Einstein
Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.

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
The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.

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

Albert Einstein
When I think of the most able students I have encountered in my teaching - I mean those who have distinguished themselves not only by skill but by independence of thought - then I must confess that all have had a lively interest in epistemology.

Albert Einstein
To be sure, it is not the fruits of scientific research that elevate a man and enrich his nature, but the urge to understand, the intellectual work, creative or receptive.

Albert Einstein
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

Albert Einstein
Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

Albert Einstein
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 might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored.

Albert Einstein
I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or State, to my circle of friends or even to my own family... Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it,to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.

Albert Einstein
The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.

Albert Einstein
Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms.

Albert Einstein
If we have the courage to decide ourselves for peace we will have peace.

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

Albert Einstein
The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.

Albert Einstein