Albert Einstein - Man Quotes

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The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.

Albert Einstein
I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.

Albert Einstein
Conscious man, to be sure, has at all times been keenly aware that life is an adventure, that life must, forever, be wrested from death.

Albert Einstein
Man like every other animal is by nature indolent. If nothing spurs him on, then he will hardly think, and will behave from habit like an automaton.

Albert Einstein
So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It always seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore.

Albert Einstein
My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

Albert Einstein
I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.

Albert Einstein
I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.

Albert Einstein
Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors, concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods— in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Albert Einstein
A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings.

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

Albert Einstein
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Albert Einstein
Just as with the man in the fairy tale who turned whatever he touched into gold, with me everything is turned into newspaper clamor.

Albert Einstein
Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

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 search for truth and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man — though often it is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.

Albert Einstein
What do you think of Spinoza? For me he is the ideal example of the cosmic man. He worked as an obscure diamond cutter, disdaining fame and a place at the table of the great. He tells us the importance of understanding our emotions and suggests what causes them. Man will never be free until he is able to direct his emotions to think clearly. Only then can he control his environment and preserve his energy for creative work.

Albert Einstein
But could not our situation be compared to one of a menacing epidemic? People are unable to view this situation in its true light, for their eyes are blinded by passion. General fear and anxiety create hatred and aggressiveness. The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and persecuted as unpatriotic.

Albert Einstein
The state is made for man, not man for the state. And in this respect science resembles the state.

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

Albert Einstein
I am not only a pacifist, but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. … Is it not better for a man to die for a cause in which he believes, such as peace, than to suffer for a cause in which he does not believe, such as war?

Albert Einstein
Hail to the man who went through life always helping others, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien. Such is the stuff of which the great moral leaders are made.

Albert Einstein
Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being.

Albert Einstein
Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.

Albert Einstein
And the traditional religions worry me. Their long history proves that they have not understood the meaning of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill. If we want to save this world from unimaginable destruction we should concentrate not on the faraway God, but on the heart of the individual. We live now in an international anarchy in which a Third World War with nuclear weapons lies before our door. We must make the individual man aware of his conscience so that he understands what it means that only a few will survive the next war.

Albert Einstein
Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.

Albert Einstein
During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer.

Albert Einstein
I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supranational organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?".

Albert Einstein
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

Albert Einstein