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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

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If Men As Individuals

Albert Einstein

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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.

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Non-cooperation In Military Matters Should Be An Essential Moral Principle For All True Scientists.

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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.

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My Mind Is My Laboratory.

Nobody Knows How The Stand Of Our Knowledge About The Atom Would Be Without Him. Personally, [niels] Bohr Is One Of The Amiable Colleagues I Have Met. He Utters His Opinions Like One Perpetually Groping And Never Like One Who Believes Himself To Be In Possession Of The Truth.

The Revolution Introduced Me To Art, And In Turn, Art Introduced Me To The Revolution!

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.

Without Creative, Independently Thinking And Judging Personalities The Upward Development Of Society Is As Unthinkable As The Development Of The Individual Personality Without The Nourishing Soil Of The Community.

Science Can Only Ascertain What Is, But Not What Should Be, And Outside Of Its Domain Value Judgements Of All Kinds Remain Necessary.

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

Just Because You Believe In Something Does Not Mean That It Is True.

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.

It Is Not So Important Where One Settles Down. The Best Thing Is To Follow Your Instincts Without Too Much Reflection.

I Would Absolutely Refuse Any Direct Or Indirect War Service And Would Try To Persuade My Friends To Do The Same, Regardless Of The Reasons For The Cause Of A War.

What Good Is A Reputation Not Put To Good Use.

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.

We Are In The Position Of A Little Child Entering A Huge Library, Whose Walls Are Covered To The Ceiling With Books In Many Different Languages. The Child Knows That Someone Must Have Written Those Books. It Does Not Know Who Or How. It Does Not Understand The The Languages In Which They Are Written. The Child Notes A Definite Plan In The Arrangement Of The Books, A Mysterious Order, Which It Does Not Comprehend But Only Dimly Suspects.

The Last Thing To Collapse Is The Surface.

The Single Most Important Decision Any Of Us Will Ever Make Is Whether Or Not To Believe The Universe Is Friendly.

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.

The Analogy I Like Is This Imagine Being Able To See The World But You Are Deaf, And Then Suddenly Someone Gives You The Ability To Hear Things As Well - You Get An Extra Dimension Of Perception.

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No Problem Is Ever Solved In The Same Consciousness Thas Was Used To Create It.

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This Crippling Of Individuals I Consider The Worst Evil Of Capitalism. Our Whole Educational System Suffers From This Evil. An Exaggerated Competitive Attitude Is Inculcated Into The Student, Who Is Trained To Worship Acquisitive Success As A Preparation For His Future.

I Want To Know All Gods Thoughts; All The Rest Are Just Details.

Physics Is Essentially An Intuitive And Concrete Science. Mathematics Is Only A Means For Expressing The Laws That Govern Phenomena.

I Cannot Conceive Of A God Who Rewards And Punishes His Creatures, Or Has A Will Of The Kind That We Experience In Ourselves. Neither Can I Nor Would I Want To Conceive Of An Individual That Survives His Physical Death; Let Feeble Souls, From Fear Or Absurd Egoism, Cherish Such Thoughts. I Am Satisfied With The Mystery Of The Eternity Of Life And With The Awareness And A Glimpse Of The Marvelous Structure Of The Existing World, Together With The Devoted Striving To Comprehend A Portion, Be It Ever So Tiny, Of The Reason That Manifests Itself In Nature.

I Cannot Conceive Of A God Who Rewards And Punishes His [sic] Creatures, Or Has A Will Of The Type Of Which We Are Conscious Ourselves.

Compound Interest Is The Eighth Natural Wonder Of The World And The Most Powerful Thing I Have Ever Encountered.

Natural Wonders

I Want To Know God's Thoughts.

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.

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.

The Development Of General Ability For Independent Thinking And Judgment Should Always Be Placed Foremost, Not The Acquisition Of Special Knowledge.

What Use Are Socks? They Only Produce Holes.

God Does Not Care About Our Mathematical Difficulties. He Integrates Empirically.

I Agree With Schopenhauer That One Of The Most Powerful Motives That Attracts People To Science And Art Is The Longing To Escape From Everyday Life.

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

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The Most Superior Of Scientific Goals Is To Embrace A Maximum Of Experiment With A Minimum Of Hypotheses.

A Thought That Sometimes Makes Me Hazy: Am I - Or Are The Others Crazy?

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If You Cannot Explain It Simply, You Do Not Understand It Enough.

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The Effort To Strive For Truth Has To Precede All Other Efforts.

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I Would Teach Peace Rather Than War, Love Rather Than Hate.

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Short Inspirational Life

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... The Desire For Truth Must Take Precedence Over All Other Desires.

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It Is Not By Sitting Still At A Grand Distance And Calling The Human Race Larvae That Men Are To Be Helped.

The Most Beautiful Thing We Can Experience Is The Mysterious. It Is The Source Of All True Art And Science. He To Whom The Realm Of The Spirit For Your Own Personal Joy And To The Profit Of The Community To Which Your Later Work Belongs.

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The Only Race I Know Is The Human One.

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.

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If I Could Do It All Again, I'd Be A Plumber.

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Curiosity Is Its Own Reason.

Learning Is Experience. Everything Else Is Just Information.

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Understanding Of Our Fellow Human Beings...becomes Fruitful Only When It Is Sustained By Sympathetic Feelings In Joy And Sorrow.

But If The Longing For The Achievement Of The Goal Is Powerfully Alive Within Us, Then Shall We Not Lack The Strength To Find The Means For Reaching The Goal And For Translating It Into Deeds.

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.

But In Physics I Soon Learned To Scent Out The Paths That Led To The Depths, And To Disregard Everything Else, All The Many Things That Clutter Up The Mind, And Divert It From The Essential. The Hitch In This Was, Of Course, The Fact That One Had To Cram All This Stuff Into One's Mind For The Examination, Whether One Liked It Or Not.

I Know What It's Like To See One's Mother Go Through The Agony Of Death And Be Unable To Help; There Is No Consolation. We All Have To Bear Such Heavy Burdens, For They Are Unalterably Linked To Life.

You Can't Use An Old Map To Explore A New World.

When You Sit With A Nice Girl For Two Hours, It Seems Like Two Minutes; When You Sit On A Hot Stove For Two Minutes, It Seems Like Two Hours. That's Relativity.

We Must Not Only Learn To Tolerate Our Differences. We Must Welcome Them As The Richness And Diversity Which Can Lead To True Intelligence.

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.

God Gave Me The Stubbornness Of A Mule And A Fairly Keen Scent.

One Has A Feeling That One Has A Kind Of Home In This Timeless Community Of Human Beings That Strive For Truth. ... I Have Always Believed That Jesus Meant By The Kingdom Of God The Small Group Scattered All Through Time Of Intellectually And Ethically Valuable People.

A Model Should Be As Simple As It Can Be But No Simpler

I Was Sitting In A Chair In The Patent Office At Bern When All Of A Sudden A Thought Occurred To Me: "if A Person Falls Freely He Will Not Feel His Own Weight." I Was Startled. This Simple Thought Made A Deep Impression On Me. It Impelled Me Toward A Theory Of Gravitation.

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.

I Have To Apologize To You That I Am Still Among The Living. There Will Be A Remedy For This, However.

The Value Of Achievement Lies In The Achieving.

In The Middle Of Difficulties Lie Opportunities.

There Has Been An Earth For A Little More Than A Billion Years. As For The Question Of The End Of It I Advise: Wait And See!

No One Does Anything Right In Life, Until They Realize That They Are Making A Mistake

Making Mistakes

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

When A Man, After Long Years Of Searching, Chances Upon A Thought Which Discloses Something Of The Beauty Of This Mysterious Universe, He Should Not Therefore Be Personally Celebrated. He Is Already Sufficiently Paid By His Experience Of Seeking And Finding.

Mysterious Universe

I'm More Interested In The Future Than In The Past, Because The Future Is Where I Intend To Live.

People Like Us, Who Believe In Physics, Know That The Distinction Between Past, Present, And Future Is Only A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion.

He Who Joyfully Marches To Music In Rank And File Has Already Earned My Contempt. He Has Been Given A Large Brain By Mistake, Since For Him The Spinal Cord Would Suffice.

Keep On Sowing Your Seed, For You Never Know Which Will Grow - Perhaps It All Will.

Relativity Teaches Us The Connection Between The Different Descriptions Of One And The Same Reality.

The Ideals Which Have Lighted My Way, And Time After Time Have Given Me New Courage To Face Life Cheerfully, Have Been Kindness, Beauty, And Truth. Without The Sense Of Kinship With Men Of Like Mind, Without The Occupation With The Objective World, The Eternally Unattainable In The Field Of Art And Scientific Endeavors, Life Would Have Seemed To The Empty. The Trite Objects Of Human Efforts — Possessions, Outward Success, Luxury—have Always Seemed To Me Contemptible.

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.

A Life Directed Chiefly Toward The Fulfillment Of Personal Desires Will Sooner Or Later Always Lead To Bitter Disappointment.

If One Studies Too Zealously, One Easily Loses His Pants.

When You Are Courting A Nice Girl An Hour Seems Like A Second. When You Sit On A Red-hot Cinder A Second Seems Like An Hour. That's Relativity.

In My Experience, The Best Creative Work Is Never Done When One Is Unhappy.

Everything Is Determined, The Beginning As Well As The End, By Forces Over Which We Have No Control. It Is Determined For The Insect, As Well As For The Star. Human Beings, Vegetables, Or Cosmic Dust, We All Dance To A Mysterious Tune, Intoned In The Distance By An Invisible Piper.

Pure Mathematics Is, In Its Way, The Poetry Of Logical Ideas. ... [by Seeking] Logical Beauty Spiritual Formulas Are Discovered Necessary For The Deeper Penetration Into The Laws Of Nature.

There Could Be No Greater Calamity Than A Permanent Discord Between Us And The Arab People. Despite The Great Wrong That Has Been Done Us, We Must Strive For A Just And Lasting Compromise With The Arab People Let Us Recall That In Former Times No People Lived In Greater Friendship With Us Than The Ancestors Of These Arabs.

It Is A Very Grave Mistake To Think That The Enjoyment Of Seeing And Searching Can Be Promoted By Means Of Coercion And A Sense Of Duty. To The Contrary, I Believe It Would Be Possible To Rob Even A Healthy Beast Of Prey Of Its Voraciousness, If It Were Possible, With The Aid Of A Whip, To Force The Beast To Devour Continuously, Even When Not Hungry.

It Takes A Different Kind Of Thinking To Solve A Problem Than The Kind Of Thinking Which Produced The Problem.

About God, I Cannot Accept Any Concept Based On The Authority Of The Church... As Long As I Can Remember. I Have Resented Mass Indoctrination. I Cannot Prove To You There Is No Personal God, But If I Were To Speak Of Him, I Would Be A Liar. I Do Not Believe In The God Of Theology Who Rewards Good And Punishes Evil. His Universe Is Not Ruled By Wishful Thinking, But By Immutable Laws

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

I Am Not A Genius, I Am Just Curious. I Ask Many Questions. And When The Answer Is Simple, Then God Is Answering.

The Most Important Decision We Make Is Whether We Believe We Live In A Friendly Or Hostile Universe.

If You Can't Explain Something Simply, You Don't Know Enough About It.

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.

All Men Are Ignorant, Just In Different Fields.

The Unleashed Power Of The Atom Has Changed Everything Save Our Modes Of Thinking And We Thus Drift Toward Unparalleled Catastrophe.

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

Life Isn't Worth Living, Unless It Is Lived For Someone Else.

It Is My View That The Vegetarian Manner Of Living, By Its Purely Physical Effect On The Human Temperament, Would Most Beneficially Influence The Lot Of Mankind.

Even Though The Realms Of Religion And Science In Themselves Are Clearly Marked Off From Each Other, Nevertheless There Exist Between The Two Strong Reciprocal Relationships And Dependencies.

Science And Religion

I Never Commit To Memory Anything That Can Easily Be Looked Up In A Book

The Question That Drives Me Hazy Is Whether It Is I Or Others Who Is Crazy.

To Understand The World One Must Not Be Worrying About One's Self.

When The Solution Is Simple, God Is Answering.

The Prestige Of Government Has Undoubtedly Been Lowered Considerably By The Prohibition Law. For Nothing Is More Destructive Of Respect For The Government And The Law Of The Land Than Passing Laws Which Cannot Be Enforced. It Is An Open Secret That The Dangerous Increase Of Crime In This Country Is Closely Connected With This.

Man Would Indeeded Be In A Poor Way If He Had To Be Restrained By Fear Of Punishment And Hope Of Reward After Death.

Let Me Tell You What I Look Like: Pale Face, Long Hair, And A Tiny Start Of A Paunch. In Addition, An Awkward Gait, And A Cigar In The Mouth And A Pen In Pocket Or Hand.

I Admit That Thoughts Influence The Body.

I Now See The Necessity Of A Beginning.

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. To Make This A Living Force And Bring It To Clear Consciousness Is Perhaps The Foremost Task Of Education. The Foundation Of Morality Should Not Be Made Dependent On Myth Nor Tied To Any Authority Lest Doubt About The Myth Or About The Legitimacy Of The Authority Imperil The Foundation Of Sound Judgment And Action.

Learn From Yesterday, Live For Today.

The More Success The Quantum Theory Has, The Sillier It Looks

Show Me A Satisfied Man, And I'll Show You A Failure.

Infinite Intelligence

Dostoevsky Gives Me More Than Any Scientist, More Than Gauss.

But The Personality That Finally Emerges Is Largely Formed By The Environment In Which A Man Happens To Find Himself During His Development, By The Structure Of The Society In Which He Grows Up, By The Tradition Of That Society, And By Its Appraisal Of Particular Types Of Behavior.

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.

Things You Can Get Access To, You Should Never Memorize.

Ninety Nine Failed Solutions Equals A Gain Of 99 Pieces Of Information.

A Problem Cannot Be Solved At The Level Of Consciousness In Which It Occurs.

Just As With The Man In The Fairy Tale Who Turned Whatever He Touched Into Gold, With Me Everything Is Turned Into Newspaper Clamor.

When I Was A Fairly Precocious Young Man I Became Thoroughly Impressed With The Futility Of The Hopes And Strivings That Chase Most Men Restlessly Through Life. Moreover, I Soon Discovered The Cruelty Of That Chase, Which In Those Years Was Much More Carefully Covered Up By Hypocrisy And Glittering Words Than Is The Case Today. By The Mere Existence Of His Stomach Everyone Was Condemned To Participate In That Chase. The Stomach Might Well Be Satisfied By Such Participation, But Not Man Insofar As He Is A Thinking And Feeling Being.

Agreements About What Is Good Or Not, Are Usually Not Worth Much. It Is Very Much Like Art, Is It Not An Art To Lead A Good Life?

Anyone Who Doesn't Take Truth Seriously In Small Matters Cannot Be Trusted In Large Ones Either.

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.

People Love Chopping Wood. In This Activity One Immediately Sees Results.

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.

It Would Be Foolish To Despise Tradition. But With Our Growing Self-consciousness And Increasing Intelligence We Must Begin To Control Tradition And Assume A Critical Attitude Toward It, If Human Relations Are Ever To Change For The Better.

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.

Were I Wrong, One Professor Would Have Been Enough.

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

People Are Like Bicycles. They Can Keep Their Balance Only As Long As They Keep Moving.

I Hate All The Loathsome Nonsense That Goes With Patriotism.

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