Quotes about Albert Einstein

220 Sourced Quotes

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

Richard Dawkins

[Einstein's cosmological constant] is a name without any meaning.... We have, in fact, not the slightest inkling of what it's real significance is. It is put in the equations in order to give the greatest possible degree of mathematical generality.

Willem de Sitter

Another interesting feature of the Einstein universe is that in principle it could be circumnavigated by a ray of light... it is unlikely that the rays would converge with sufficient accuracy. Nevertheless it is interesting to consider the possibility that some of the stars and nebulae which we see may after all be only optical ghosts.

Gerald James Whitrow

My comfort is what Einstein said…'If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor'.

Arthur Koestler

In that year [Einstein] had roughly equal numbers of large and small cats. Therefore, quite logically, he cut two holes in each door: a large one for the large cats, and a small one for the small cats. It made perfect sense.... A hole should have a meaningful existence, and the small cats might be offended if a personalized nothing was not prepared for them.

I thought of you as my guardian, Einstein… you taught me that I'm your guardian, too, that I'm Travis's guardian, and he is my guardian and yours. We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness. You've taught me that we're all needed, even those who sometimes think we're worthless, plain, and dull.

You don't have to be a genius to recognize one. If you did, Einstein would never have gotten invited to the White House.

We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it.

Einstein famously said that "the theory determines the observation." He meant that in an experiment what you tend to observe is what either confirms or disconfirms the theory you started with. Sometimes scientists do manage to notice what appears to be extraneous phenomena, and look for a new explanation. They then hit on new theories, which have to be tested in their turn by experiment.

- Report...

When asked how he was different from the average person, Einstein replied: "When asked to look for a needle in a haystack, the average person would search until he found the needle; whereas I would look for all needles."

Einstein never really said that though