Albert Einstein Quotes

789 Sourced Quotes

What lead me more or less directly to the special theory of relativity was the conviction that the electromotive force acting on a body in motion in a magnetic field was nothing else but an electric field.

Albert Einstein
It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.

Albert Einstein
Study and in general the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Albert Einstein
I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.

Albert Einstein
If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.

Albert Einstein
I made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification-the danger that the Germans would make them.

Albert Einstein
When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large, scientific method in most cases fails us. One need only think of the weather, in which case prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Nevertheless no one doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us.
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.

Albert Einstein
A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.

Albert Einstein
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein
The fact that man produces a concept "I" besides the totality of his mental and emotional experiences or perceptions does not prove that there must be any specific existence behind such a concept. We are succumbing to illusions produced by our self-created language, without reaching a better understanding of anything. Most of so-called philosophy is due to this kind of fallacy.

Albert Einstein
The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.

Albert Einstein
In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.

Albert Einstein
Science is never finished because the human mind only uses a small portion of its capacity, and man's exploration of his world is also limited. If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an inscrutable distance—whatever name we give him—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge.

Albert Einstein
Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world... the root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity...

Albert Einstein
The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working.

Albert Einstein
It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.

Albert Einstein
In so far as theories of mathematics speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality.

Albert Einstein
Most people go on living their everyday life: half-frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragic-comedy that is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world.

Albert Einstein
That little word 'WE' I mistrust and here's why:
No man of another can say "He is I".
Behind all agreement lies something amiss
All seeming accord cloaks a lurking abyss.

Albert Einstein
Each ray of light moves in the coordinate system 'at rest' with the definite, constant velocity V independent of whether this ray of light is emitted by a body at rest or a body in motion.

Albert Einstein
Many people think that the progress of the human race is based on experiences of an empirical, critical nature, but I say that true knowledge is to be had only through a philosophy of deduction. For it is intuition that improves the world, not just following a trodden path of thought. Intuition makes us look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be brought under one law. To look for related facts means holding onto what one has instead of searching for new facts. Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge. Intuition, not intellect, is the 'open sesame' of yourself.

Albert Einstein
This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.

Albert Einstein
To his cat, who disliked rain: I know what's wrong, my dear, but I really do not know how to turn it off.

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
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein
Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.

Albert Einstein
In every true searcher of Nature there is a kind of religious reverence. For he finds it impossible to imagine that he is the first to have thought out the exceedingly delicate threads that connect his perceptions.

Albert Einstein
What can the schools do to defend democracy? Should they preach a specific political doctrine? I believe they should not. If they are able to teach young people to have a critical mind and a socially oriented attitude, they will have done all that is necessary.

Albert Einstein
Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality.

Albert Einstein
The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things.

Albert Einstein