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I Was Originally Supposed To Become An Engineer But The Thought Of Having To Expend My Creative Energy On Things That Make Practical Everyday Life Even More Refined, With A Loathsome Capital Gain As The Goal, Was Unbearable To Me.

-Albert Einstein

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I Was Originally Supposed

Albert Einstein

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I Was Originally Supposed To Become An Engineer But The Thought Of Having To Expend My Creative Energy On Things That Make Practical Everyday Life Even More Refined, With A Loathsome Capital Gain As The Goal, Was Unbearable To Me.

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If I Give You A Pfennig, You Will Be One Pfennig Richer And I'll Be One Pfennig Poorer. But If I Give You An Idea, You Will Have A New Idea, But I Shall Still Have It Too.

I Am Not A Positivist. Positivism States That What Cannot Be Observed Does Not Exist. This Conception Is Scientifically Indefensible, For It Is Impossible To Make Valid Affirmations Of What People 'can' Or 'cannot' Observe. One Would Have To Say 'only What We Observe Exists,' Which Is Obviously False.

Lasting Harmony With A Woman (was) An Undertaking In Which I Twice Failed Rather Disgracefully.

The Idle Man Does Not Know What It Is To Enjoy Rest.

The Religion Of The Future Will Be A Cosmic Religion. The Religion Which Based On Experience, Which Refuses Dogmatic. If There's Any Religion That Would Cope The Scientific Needs It Will Be Buddhism.

...behind All The Discernible Laws And Connections, There Remains Something Subtle, Intangible And Inexplicable.

It Almost Seems To Me That Man Was Not Born To Be A Carnivore.

The Fear Of Death Is The Most Unjustified Of All Fears, For There's No Risk Of Accident For Someone Who's Dead.

The Individual Who Has Experienced Solitude Will Not Easily Become A Victim Of Mass Suggestion.

Formerly, People Thought That If Matter Disappeared From The Universe, Space And Time Would Remain. Relativity Declares That Space And Time Would Disappear With Matter.

A Large Part Of Our Attitude Toward Things Is Conditioned By Opinions And Emotions Which We Unconsciously Absorb As Children From Our Environment. In Other Words, It Is Tradition—besides Inherited Aptitudes And Qualities—which Makes Us What We Are. We But Rarely Reflect How Relatively Small As Compared With The Powerful Influence Of Tradition Is The Influence Of Our Conscious Thought Upon Our Conduct And Convictions.

Everyone Has Two Choices. We're Either Full Of Love... Or Full Of Fear.

Inspirational Love

On The Left-hand Side Of The Field Equation We May Add The Fundamental Tensor Guv, Multiplied By A Universal Constant, -λ, At Present Unknown, Without Destroying The General Covariance.

I Believe That I Have Really Found The Relationship Between Gravitation And Electricity, Assuming That The Miller Experiments Are Based On A Fundamental Error. Otherwise, The Whole Relativity Theory Collapses Like A House Of Cards.

The Daily Struggle Does Not Arise From A Purpose Or A Program, But From An Immediate Need.

The Ordinary Adult Never Gives A Thought To Space-time Problems ... I, On The Contrary, Developed So Slowly That I Did Not Begin To Wonder About Space And Time Until I Was An Adult. I Then Delved More Deeply Into The Problem Than Any Other Adult Or Child Would Have Done.

Conviction Is A Good Motive, But A Bad Judge.

Not Until The Creation And Maintenance Of Decent Conditions Of Life For All Men Are Recognized And Accepted As A Common Obligation Of All Men And All Countries — Not Until Then Shall We, With A Certain Degree Of Justification, Be Able To Speak Of Mankind As Civilized.

But Without Deeper Reflection One Knows From Daily Life That One Exists For Other People--first Of All For Those Upon Whose Smiles And Well-being Our Own Happiness Is Wholly Dependent, And Then For The Many, Unknown To Us, To Whose Destinies We Are Bound By The Ties Of Sympathy.

Whoever Is Careless With The Truth In Small Matters Cannot Be Trusted In Important Affairs.

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.

It Gives Me Great Pleasure Indeed To See The Stubbornness Of An Incorrigible Nonconformist Warmly Acclaimed.

The Individual Must Not Merely Wait And Criticize, He Must Defend The Cause The Best He Can. The Fate Of The World Will Be Such As The World Deserves.

Go Out As Far As You Can Go And Start From There

Out Of The Clutter Find Simplicity

Imagination Is More Powerful Than Knowledge Because Knowledhe Is Limited But Imagination Is Without Boundaries

Without The Sense Of Fellowship With Men Of Like Mind, Of Preoccupation With The Objective, The Eternally Unattainable In The Field Of Art And Scientific Research, Life Would Have Seemed To Me Empty.

Do Not Grow Old, No Matter How Long You Live. Never Cease To Stand Like Curious Children Before The Great Mystery Into Which We Were Born.

Knowledge Is Limited.

The Majority Of The Stupid Is Invincible And Guaranteed For All Time. The Terror Of Their Tyranny, However, Is Alleviated By Their Lack Of Consistency.

The Thing Is, Not To Stop Questioning.

A Human Being Is A Part Of The Whole Called By Us Universe; A Part Limited In Time And Space. He Experiences Himself, His Thoughts, And His Feelings As Something Separate From The Rest - A Kind Of Optical Delusion Of Consciousness.

Communities Tend To Be Guided Less Than Individuals By Conscience And A Sense Of Responsibility. How Much Misery Does This Fact Cause Mankind! It Is The Source Of Wars And Every Kind Of Oppression, Which Fill The Earth With Pain, Sighs And Bitterness.

I Am Fascinated By Spinoza's Pantheism, But Admire Even More His Contributions To Modern Thought Because He Is The First Philosopher To Deal With The Soul And The Body As One, Not Two Separate Things

The Most Evident Difference Springs From The Important Part Which Is Played In Man By A Relatively Strong Power Of Imagination And By The Capacity To Think, Aided As It Is By Language And Other Symbolically Devices.

If We Knew What It Was We Were Doing, It Would Not Be Called Research, Would It?

Often In Evolutionary Processes A Species Must Adapt To New Conditions In Order To Survive. Today The Atomic Bomb Has Altered Profoundly The Nature Of The World As We Know It, And The Human Race Consequently Finds Itself In A New Habitat To Which It Must Adapt Its Thinking.

A Priori One Should Expect A Chaotic World Which Cannot Be Grasped By The Mind In Any Way... The Kind Of Order Created By Newton's Theory Of Gravitation...is Wholly Different. Even If The Axioms Of The Theory Are Proposed By Man, The Success Of Such A Project Presupposes A High Degree Of Ordering Of The Objective World.... That Is The "miracle" Which Is Being Constantly Reinforced As Our Knowledge Expands.

If Someone Feels That He Has Never Made A Mistake In His Life, It Only Means That He Has Never Tried Anything New In His Life.

We All Try To Escape Pain And Death, While We Seek What Is Pleasant.

Degeneracy Follows Every Autocratic System Of Violence, For Violence Inevitably Attracts Moral Inferiors. Time Has Proven That Illustrious Tyrants Are Succeeded By Scoundrels.

A Desk, Some Pads, A Pencil, And A Large Basket -- To Hold All Of Mu Mistakes.

[asked About A Book In Which 100 Nazi Professors Charged Him With Scientific Error.] Were I Wrong, One Professor Would Have Been Quite Enough.

In The Middle Of Adversity There Is Great Opportunity.

The Genius Is In Making The Complex Simple.

Matter Is Energy ... Energy Is Light ... We Are All Light Beings

An Evening Everyone Agrees, Is A Lost Evening.

For Me The Jewish Religion Like All Others Is An Incarnation Of The Most Childish Superstitions, And The Jewish People To Whom I Gladly Belong And With Whose Mentality I Have A Deep Affinity Have No Different Quality For Me Than All Other People. As Far As My Experience Goes, They Are No Better Than Other Human Groups, Although They Are Protected From The Worst Cancers By A Lack Of Power. Otherwise I Cannot See Anything Chosen About Them.

A Finely Tempered Nature Longs To Escape From The Personal Life Into The World Of Objective Perception And Thought.

I Live In That Solitude Which Is Painful In Youth, But Delicious In The Years Of Maturity.

If I Can't Picture It, I Can't Understand It.

I Cannot Then Believe In This Concept Of An Anthropomorphic God Who Has The Powers Of Interfering With These Natural Laws. As 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.

The Release Of Atomic Power Has Changed Everything Except Our Way Of Thinking ... The Solution To This Problem Lies In The Heart Of Mankind. If Only I Had Known, I Should Have Become A Watchmaker. (1945)

I Am Doing Just Fine, Considering That I Have Triumphantly Survived Nazism And Two Wives.

I Make It A Rule Not To Clutter My Mind With Simple Information That I Can Find In A Book In Five Minutes.

It Was The Experience Of Mystery - Even If Mixed With Fear - That Engendered Religion.

It Seems To Me That The Idea Of A Personal God Is An Anthropological Concept Which I Cannot Take Seriously. I Also Cannot Imagine Some Will Or Goal Outside The Human Sphere... Science Has Been Charged With Undermining Morality, But The Charge Is Unjust. A Man's Ethical Behavior Should Be Based Effectually On Sympathy, Education, And Social Ties And Needs; 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.

I Have Never Belonged Wholeheartedly To A Country, A State, Nor To A Circle Of Friends, Nor Even To My Own Family. When I Was Still A Rather Precocious Young Man, I Already Realized Most Vividly The Futility Of The Hopes And Aspirations That Most Men Pursue Throughout Their Lives. Well-being And Happiness Never Appeared To Me As An Absolute Aim. I Am Even Inclined To Compare Such Moral Aims To The Ambitions Of A Pig.

You Can Never Solve A Problem With The Same Kind Of Thinking That Created The Problem In The First Place.

A Religious Person Is Devout In The Sense That He Has No Doubt About The Significance Of Those Superpersonal Objects And Goals Which Neither Require Nor Are Capable Of Rational Foundation

The Supreme Goal Of All Theory Is To Make The Irreducible Basic Elements As Simple And As Few As Possible Without Having To Surrender The Adequate Representation Of A Simple Datum Of Experience.

Incompetence Is The True Crisis.

Feeling And Longing Are The Motive Forces Behind All Human Endeavor And Human Creations.

There Are Two Ways To Live: You Can Live As If Nothing Is A Miracle; You Can Live As If Everything Is A Miracle. The Most Beautiful Thing We Can Experience Is The Mysterious. It Is The Source Of All True Art And All Science. He To Whom This Emotion Is A Stranger, Who Can No Longer Pause To Wonder And Stand Rapt Is Awe, Is As Good As Dead: His Eyes Are Closed.

That Is The Way To Learn The Most, That When You Are Doing Something With Such Enjoyment That You Don't Notice That The Time Passes.

If You Feed Your Mind As Often As You Feed Your Stomach, Then You'll Never Have To Worry About Feeding Your Stomach Or A Roof Over Your Head Or Clothes On Your Back.

Roof Over Your Head

To Have Security Against Atomic Bombs And Against The Other Biological Weapons, We Have To Prevent War, For If We Cannot Prevent War Every Nation Will Use Every Means That Is At Their Disposal; And In Spite Of All Promises They Make, They Will Do It. At The Same Time, So Long As War Is Not Prevented, All The Governments Of The Nations Have To Prepare For War, And If You Have To Prepare For War, Then You Are In A State Where You Cannot Abolish War.

Education Is Not Received. It Is Achieved.

If You Have Never Failed, You Have Never Tried Anything New.

Short Inspirational Life

Non-comprehenders Are Often Distressed. Not You, Though-because With Good Humor You're Blessed. After All, Your Thoughts Went Like This, I Dare Say: It Was None But The Lord Who Made Us That Way.

Although I Tried To Be Universal In Thought, I Am European By Instinct And Inclination.

Our Death Is Not An End If We Can Live On In Our Children And The Younger Generation. For They Are Us; Our Bodies Are Only Wilted Leaves On The Tree Of Life.

I Have Just Got A New Theory Of Eternity.

Without "ethical Culture", There Is No Salvation For Humanity.

I Am A Determinist. As Such, I Do Not Believe In Free Will...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.

That's My Mathematician Who Examines Problems Which I Put Before Him And Checks Their Validity. You See, I Am Not Myself A Good Mathematician.

Information Is Not Knowledge.

Thought Provoking

The Truth Of A Theory Can Never Be Proven, For One Never Knows If Future Experience Will Contradict Its Conclusions.

It Is My Conviction That Killing Under The Cloak Of War Is Nothing But An Act Of Murder.

Killing Someone

I Believe In Standardizing Automobiles. I Do Not Believe In Standardizing Human Beings. Standardization Is A Great Peril Which Threatens American Culture.

The Conscientious Objector Is A Revoultionary. On Deciding To Disobey The Law He Sacrifices His Personal Interests To The Most Important Cause Of Working For The Betterment Of Society.

I Should Much Rather See Reasonable Agreement With The Arabs On The Basis Of Living Together In Peace Than The Creation Of A Jewish State. My Awareness Of The Essential Nature Of Judaism Resists The Idea Of A Jewish State With Borders, An Army, And A Measure Of Temporal Power, No Matter How Modest. I Am Afraid Of The Inner Damage Judaism Will Sustain—especially From The Development Of A Narrow Nationalism Within Our Own Ranks, Against Which We Have Already Had To Fight Strongly, Even Without A Jewish State.

The Most Beautiful Gift Of Nature Is That It Gives One Pleasure To Look Around And Try To Comprehend What We See.

Science Is A Wonderful Thing If One Does Not Have To Earn One's Living At It. One Should Earn One's Living By Work Of Which One Is Sure One Is Capable. Only When We Do Not Have To Be Accountable To Anybody Can We Find Joy In Scientific Endeavor.

To Be Sure, The Doctrine Of A Personal God Interfering With Natural Events Could Never Be Refuted, In The Real Sense, By Science, For This Doctrine Can Always Take Refuge In Those Domains In Which Scientific Knowledge Has Not Yet Been Able To Set Foot.

The Series Of Integers Is Obviously An Invention Of The Human Mind, A Self-created Tool Which Simplifies The Ordering Of Certain Sensory Experiences.

The Whole Of Science Is Nothing More Than A Refinement Of Everyday Thinking.

Great Spirits Have Always Encountered Violent Opposition From Mediocre Minds.

I Soon Learned To Scent Out That Which Was Able To Lead To Fundamentals And To Turn Aside From Everything Else, From The Multitude Of Things Which Clutter Up The Mind And Divert It From The Essential.

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.

The Release Of Atomic Energy Has Not Created A New Problem. It Has Merely Made More Urgent The Necessity Of Solving An Existing One.

Human Beings, In Their Thinking, Feeling And Acting Are Not Free Agents But Are As Causally Bound As The Stars In Their Motion.

There's A Genius In All Of Us.

Each Of Us Is Here For A Brief Sojourn; For What Purpose He Knows Not, Though He Sometimes Thinks He Senses It. But Without Deeper Reflection One Knows From Daily Life That One Exists For Other People.

We Must Be Prepared To Make The Same Heroic Sacrifices For The Cause Of Peace That We Make Ungrudgingly For The Cause Of War.

[ernest Rutherford Is]...a Second Newton.

A Ship Is Safe At Shore But It's Not Built For That.

The Content Of Scientific Theory Itself Offers No Moral Foundation For The Personal Conduct Of Life.

I Speak To Everyone In The Same Way, Whether He Is The Garbage Man Or The President Of The University.

You Do Not Really Understand Something Unless You Can Explain It To Your Grandmother.

Whatever Your Problems In Math Are, I Assure Mine Are Greater.

Compound Interest On Debt Was The Banker's Greatest Invention, To Capture, And Enslave, A Productive Society.

I Want To Know God's Thoughts.

Nothing Will End War Unless The Peoples Themselves Refuse To Go To War.

To Sense That Behind Anything That Can Be Experienced There Is A Something That Our Mind Cannot Grasp And Whose Beauty And Sublimity Reaches Us Only Indirectly And As A Feeble Reflection, This Is Religiousness. In This Sense I Am Religious.

One Cannot Deal With A Problem With The Same Thinking That Creates It.

Once You Can Accept The Universe As Matter Expanding Into Nothing That Is Something, Wearing Stripes With Plaid Comes Easy.

The Ideals Which Have Always Shone Before Me And Filled Me With The Joy Of Living Are Goodness, Beauty, And Truth. To Make A Goal Of Comfort Or Happiness Has Never Appealed To Me; A System Of Ethics Built On This Basis Would Be Sufficient Only For A Herd Of Cattle.

Make Everything As Simple As Possible, But Not Simpler. A Man Should Look For What Is, And Not For What He Thinks Should Be. We Cannot Solve Our Problems With The Same Thinking We Used When We Created Them. A Question That Sometimes Drives Me Hazy: Am I Or Are The Others Crazy? Any Intelligent Fool Can Make Things Bigger And More Complex... It Takes A Touch Of Genius - And A Lot Of Courage To Move In The Opposite Direction. All Religions, Arts And Sciences Are Branches Of The Same Tree. It's Not That I'm So Smart, It's Just That I Stay With Problems Longer.

Art Is Standing With One Hand Extended Into The Universe And One Hand Extended Into The World, And Letting Ourselves Be A Conduit For Passing Energy.

The Next World War Will Be Fought With Stones.

You Can't Resolve A Dilemma With All The Very Same Mind That Made It

I Do Not Believe In A Personal God And I Have Never Denied This But Have Expressed It Clearly.

I Do Not Share The Crusading Spirit Of The Professional Atheist Whose Fervor Is Mostly Due To A Painful Act Of Liberation From The Fetters Of Religious Indoctrination Received In Youth. I Prefer An Attitude Of Humility Corresponding To The Weakness Of Our Intellectual Understanding Of Nature And Of Our Own Being.

More And More I Come To Value Charity And Love Of One's Fellow Being Above Everything Else...all Our Lauded Technological Progress-our Very Civilization-is Like The Axe In The Hand Of The Pathological Criminal.

Information Is Not Knowledge. The Only Source Of Knowledge Is Experience. You Need Experience To Gain Wisdom.

Knowledge Experience

Today We Must Abandon Competition And Secure Cooperation. This Must Be The Central Fact In All Our Considerations Of International Affairs; Otherwise We Face Certain Disaster. Past Thinking And Methods Did Not Prevent World Wars. Future Thinking Must Prevent Wars...the Stakes Are Immense, The Task Colossal The Time Is Short. But We May Hope- We Must Hope- That Man's Own Creation, Man's Own Genius, Will Not Destroy Him.

A Human Being Is A Part Of The Whole Called By Us Universe, A Part Limited In Time And Space. He Experiences Himself, His Thoughts And Feeling As Something Separated From The Rest, A Kind Of Optical Delusion Of His Consciousness. This Delusion Is A Kind Of Prison For Us, Restricting Us To Our Personal Desires And To Affection For A Few Persons Nearest To Us. Our Task Must Be To Free Ourselves From This Prison By Widening Our Circle Of Compassion To Embrace All Living Creatures And The Whole Of Nature In Its Beauty.

I Want To Gods Thoughts, The Rest Are Details.

I Am By Heritage A Jew, By Citizenship A Swiss, And By Makeup A Human Being, And Only A Human Being, Without Any Special Attachment To Any State Or National Entity Whatsoever.

I Am An Adherent Of The Ideal Of Democracy, Although I Well Know The Weaknesses Of The Democratic Form Of Government. Social Equality And Economic Protection Of The Individual Appeared To Me Always As The Important Communal Aims Of The State. Although I Am A Typical Loner In Daily Life, My Consciousness Of Belonging To The Invisible Community Of Those Who Strive For Truth, Beauty, And Justice Has Preserved Me From Feeling Isolated.

The Most Important Thing Is To Not Stop Questioning.

Intelligence And Genius

Thought Provoking

Jesus Is Too Colossal For The Pen Of Phrasemongers, However Artful. No Man Can Dispose Of Christianity With A Bon Mot

The Gift Of Fantasy Has Meant More To Me Than My Talent For Absorbing Positive Knowledge.

The Family That Prays Together...is Brainwashing Their Children.

I Am Happy Because I Want Nothing From Anyone. I Do Not Care For Money. Decorations, Titles Or Distinctions Mean Nothing To Me. I Do Not Crave Praise. The Only Thing That Gives Me Pleasure, Apart From My Work, My Violin And My Sailboat, Is The Appreciation Of My Fellow Workers.

We Can't Solve Today's Problems With The Mentality That Created Them.

Concepts Which Have Proved Useful For Ordering Things Easily Assume So Great An Authority Over Us, That We Forget Their Terrestrial Origin And Accept Them As Unalterable Facts. They Then Become Labeled As 'conceptual Necessities,' Etc. The Road Of Scientific Progress Is Frequently Blocked For Long Periods By Such Errors.

What Is Essential In The Life Of A Man Of My Kind Is What He Thinks And How He Thinks, And Not What He Does Or Suffers.

Our Task Must Be To Free Ourselves By Widening Our Circle Of Compassion To Embrace All Living Creatures And The Whole Of Nature And Its Beauty.

I Want To Go When I Want. It Is Tasteless To Prolong Life Artificially. I Have Done My Share, It Is Time To Go. I Will Do It Elegantly.

Although Words Exist For The Most Part For The Transmission Of Ideas, There Are Some Which Produce Such Violent Disturbance In Our Feelings That The Role They Play In The Transmission Of Ideas Is Lost In The Background.

The Truth Isn't Always A Blinding Light. Sometimes It's A Deep And Dazzling Darkness, That Illuminates - And Burns - Just As Surely.

Academic Chairs Are Many, But Wise And Noble Teachers Are Few; Lecture-rooms Are Numerous And Large, But The Number Of Young People Who Genuinely Thirst After Truth And Justice Is Small

Be Kind To People Who Are Different From You.

I Cannot Conceive Of A Personal God Who Would Directly Influence The Actions Of Individuals, Or Would Directly Sit In Judgment On Creatures Of His Own Creation.

My Feeling Is Religious Insofar As I Am Imbued With The Consciousness Of The Insufficiency Of The Human Mind To Understand More Deeply The Harmony Of The Universe Which We Try To Formulate As "laws Of Nature".

I Have Yet To Figure Out Whether It Is I Am That Am Crazy, Or The World.

Our Situation On This Earth Seems Strange. Every One Of Us Appears Here Involuntarily And Uninvited For A Short Stay, Without Knowing The Whys And The Wherefore. In Our Daily Lives We Only Feel That Man Is Here For The Sake Of Others, For Those Whom We Love And For Many Other Beings Whose Fate Is Connected With Our Own. I Am Often Worried At The Thought That My Life Is Based To Such A Large Extent On The Work Of My Fellow Human Beings And I Am Aware Of My Great Indebtedness To Them.

What The Individual Can Do Is To Give A Fine Example, And To Have The Courage To Uphold Ethical Values .. In A Society Of Cynics.

Words Of Wisdom

Only Two Things Are Infinite, The Universe And Human Stupidity, And I'm Not Sure About The Former.

Don't Wait For Miracles, Your Whole Life Is A Miracle.

The Only Way To Escape The Personal Corruption Of Praise Is To Go On Working. One Is Tempted To Stop And Listen To It. The Only Thing Is To Turn Away And Go On Working. Work. There Is Nothing Else.

When I Examine Myself And My Methods Of Thought, I Come To The Conclusion That The Gift Of Fantasy Has Meant More To Me Than Any Talent For Abstract, Positive Knowledge.

New Frameworks Are Like Climbing A Mountain - The Larger View Encompasses Rather Than Rejects The More Restricted View.

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.

Consider The Concepts Referred To In The Words 'where', 'when', 'why', 'being', To The Elucidation Of Which Innumerable Volumes Of Philosophy Have Been Devoted. We Fare No Better In Our Speculations Than A Fish Which Should Strive To Become Clear As To What Is Water.

I Assert That The Cosmic Religious Experience Is The Strongest And The Noblest Driving Force Behind Scientific Research.

It Strikes Me As Unfair, And Even In Bad Taste, To Select A Few Of Them For Boundless Admiration, Attributing Superhuman Powers Of Mind And Character To Them. This Has Been My Fate, And The Contrast Between The Popular Estimate Of My Powers And Achievements And The Reality Is Simply Grotesque.

Three Rules Of Work: Out Of Clutter Find Simplicity. From Discord Find Harmony. In The Middle Of Difficulty Lies Opportunity.

Only In Mathematics And Physics Was I, Through Self-study, Far Beyond The School Curriculum, And Also With Regard To Philosophy As It Was Taught In The School Curriculum.

There Is No Logical Way To The Discovery Of These Elemental Laws. There Is Only The Way Of Intuition, Which Is Helped By A Feeling For The Order Lying Behind The Appearance.

We Should Be On Our Guard Not To Overestimate Science And Scientific Methods When It Is A Question Of Human Problems, And We Should Not Assume That Experts Are The Only Ones Who Have The Right To Express Themselves On Questions Affecting The Organization Of Society.

Scientific Method

It Would Of Course Be A Great Step Forward If We Succeeded In Combining The Gravitational Field And The Electromagnetic Field Into A Single Structure. Only So Could The Era In Theoretical Physics Inaugurated By Faraday And James Clerk Maxwell Be Brought To A Satisfactory Close.

Theoretical Physics

Everyone Knew It Was Impossible, Until A Fool Who Didn't Know Came Along And Did It.

So Long As There Are Men, There Will Be Wars.

Imagination Is The Highest Form Of Research.

There Is Nothing Divine About Morality; It Is A Purely Human Affair. If People Are Good Only Because They Fear Punishment, And Hope For Reward, Then We Are A Sorry Lot Indeed. What The Individual Can Do Is To Give A Fine Example, And To Have The Courage To Uphold Ethical Values .. In A Society Of Cynics.

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.

How I Wish That Somewhere There Existed An Island For Those Who Are Wise And Of Good Will.

If One Day You Have To Choose Between The World And Love, Remember This: If You Choose The World You’ll Be Left Without Love, But If You Choose Love, With It You Will Conquer The World

Conquer The World

I Prefer To Make Up My Own Quotes And Attribute Them To Very Smart People, So That I Can Use Them To Win Arguments

I Have Never Looked Upon Ease And Happiness As Ends In Themselves. This Ethical Basis I Call The Ideal Of The Pigsty.

If You Want Your Children To Be Intelligent, Read Them Fairy Tales. If You Want Them To Be More Intelligent, Read Them More Fairy Tales.

There Is Possibility In Every Difficulty.

Paper Is To Write Things Down That We Need To Remember. Our Brains Are Used To Think.

Enjoying The Joys Of Others And Suffering With Them-these Are The Best Guides For Man.

It Is The Theory That Decides What Can Be Observed.

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.

In The Midst Of Difficulty Lies Opportunity.

I Don't Believe In Mathematics.

Don't Let The Measurable Drive Out The Relevant

The Mind That Opens To A New Idea Never Returns To Its Original Size

One Cannot Help But Be In Awe When [one] Contemplates The Mysteries Of Eternity, Of Life, Of The Marvelous Structure Of Reality.

I Asked Myself Childish Questions And Proceeded To Answer Them.

Germany Had The Misfortune Of Becoming Poisoned, First Because Of Plenty, And Then Because Of Want.

I Am Absolutely Convinced That No Wealth In The World Can Help Humanity Forward, Even In The Hands Of The Most Devoted Worker In This Cause. The Example Of Great And Pure Characters Is The Only Thing That Can Produce Fine Ideas And Noble Deeds. Money Only Appeals To Selfishness And Always Tempts Its Owners Irresistibly To Abuse It

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.

The Thinking It Took To Get Us Into This Mess Is Not The Same Thinking That Is Going To Get Us Out Of It.

What A Deep Faith In The Rationality Of The Structure Of The World And What A Longing To Understand Even A Small Glimpse Of The Reason Revealed In The World There Must Have Been In Kepler And Newton To Enable Them To Unravel The Mechanism Of The Heavens In Long Years Of Lonely Work!

Imagination Is Greater Than Knowledge.

Perfection Of Means And Confusion Of Goals Seem To Characterize Our Age. If We Desire Sincerely And Passionately The Safety, The Welfare And The Free Development Of The Talents Of All Men, We Shall Not Be In Want Of The Means To Approach Such A State.

Conceptions Without Experience Are Void; Experience Without Conceptions Is Blind.

The Indifference, Callousness And Contempt That So Many People Exhibit Toward Animals Is Evil First Because It Results In Great Suffering In Animals, And Second Because It Results In An Incalculably Great Impoverishment Of The Human Spirit.

The Trouble With The Younger Generation Is That They Don't Stay Young For Very Long.

Most Teachers Waste Their Time By Asking Question Which Are Intended To Discover What A Pupil Does Not Know Whereas The True Art Of Questioning Has For Its Purpose To Discover What Pupils Knows Or Is Capable Of Knowing.

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.

... On Principle, It Is Quite Wrong To Try Founding A Theory On Observable Magnitudes Alone. In Reality The Very Opposite Happens. It Is The Theory Which Decides What We Can Observe.

As Long As I Have Any Choice In The Matter, I Shall Live Only In A Country Where Civil Liberty, Tolerance And Equality Of All Citizens Before The Law Prevail.

Even If Only 2 Percent Of Those Assigned To Perform Military Service Should Announce Their Refusal To Fight, Governments Would Be Powerless, They Would Not Dare Send Such A Large Number Of People To Jail.

The First And Most Important Necessity Is The Creation Of A Modus Vivendi With The Arab People.

I Do Not Believe That A Man Should Be Restrained In His Daily Actions By Being Afraid Of Punishment After Death Or That He Should Do Things Only Because In This Way He Will Be Rewarded After He Dies. This Does Not Make Sense. The Proper Guidance During The Life Of A Man Should Be The Weight That He Puts Upon Ethics And The Amount Of Consideration That He Has For Others.

It Takes A Touch Of Genius - And A Lot Of Courage To Move In The Opposite Direction.

We Are All Life Trying To Live, Among Other Life Trying To Live.

Man Is, At One And The Same Time, A Solitary Being And A Social Being. As A Solitary Being, He Attempts To Protect His Own Existence And That Of Those Who Are Closest To Him, To Satisfy His Personal Desires, And To Develop His Innate Abilities. As A Social Being, He Seeks To Gain The Recognition And Affection Of His Fellow Human Beings, To Share In Their Pleasures, To Comfort Them In Their Sorrows, And To Improve Their Conditions Of Life.

Thinking Is Hard Work; That's Why So Few Do It.

A Perfection Of Means, And Confusion Of Aims, Seems To Be Our Main Problem.

The Universe Is A Friendly Place.

When Men Are Engaged In War And Conquest, The Tools Of Science Become As Dangerous As A Razor In The Hands Of A Child Of Three. We Must Not Condemn Man Because His Inventiveness And Patient Conquest Of The Forces Of Nature Are Being Exploited For False And Destructive Purposes. Rather, We Should Remember That The Fate Of Mankind Hinges Entirely Upon Man’s Moral Development.

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Madonna Ciccone

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

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