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In Two Weeks The Sheeplike Masses Of Any Country Can Be Worked Up By The Newspapers Into Such A State Of Excited Fury That Men Are Prepared To Put On Uniforms And Kill And Be Killed, For The Sake Of The Sordid Ends Of A Few Interested Parties. Compulsory Military Service Seems To Me The Most Disgraceful Symptom Of That Deficiency In Personal Dignity From Which Civilized Mankind Is Suffering Today.

-Albert Einstein

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In Two Weeks The

Albert Einstein

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In Two Weeks The Sheeplike Masses Of Any Country Can Be Worked Up By The Newspapers Into Such A State Of Excited Fury That Men Are Prepared To Put On Uniforms And Kill And Be Killed, For The Sake Of The Sordid Ends Of A Few Interested Parties. Compulsory Military Service Seems To Me The Most Disgraceful Symptom Of That Deficiency In Personal Dignity From Which Civilized Mankind Is Suffering Today.

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This Is Too Difficult For A Mathematician. It Takes A Philosopher. The Hardest Thing In The World To Understand Is The Income Tax.

The Opinion Prevailed Among Advanced Minds That It Was Time That Belief Should Be Replaced Increasingly By Knowledge; Belief That Did Not Itself Rest On Knowledge Was Superstition, And As Such Had To Be Opposed.

May The Conscience And The Common Sense Of The Peoples Be Awakened, So That We May Reach A New Stage In The Life Of Nations, Where People Will Look Back On War As An Incomprehensible Aberration Of Their Forefathers!

The Discovery Of Nuclear Chain Reactions Need Not Bring About The Destruction Of Mankind Any More Than Did The Discovery Of Matches. We Only Must Do Everything In Our Power To Safeguard Against Its Abuse. Only A Supranational Organization, Equipped With A Sufficiently Strong Executive Power, Can Protect Us.

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

Making Mistakes

The Religious Geniuses Of All Ages Have Been Distinguished By This Kind Of Religious Feeling, Which Knows No Dogma And No God Conceived In Man's Image; So That There Can Be No Church Whose Central Teachings Are Based On It. Hence It Is Precisely Among The Heretics Of Every Age That We Find Men Who Were Filled With This Highest Kind Of Religious Feeling And Were In Many Cases Regarded By Their Contemporaries As Atheists, Sometimes Also As Saints. Looked At In This Light, Men Like Democritus, Francis Of Assisi, And Spinoza Are Closely Akin To One Another.

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

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

I Am A Jew, But I Am Enthralled By The Luminous Figure Of The Nazarene. Jesus Is Too Colossal For The Pen Of Phrasemongers, However Artful." He Further Added: "no Man Can Read The Gospels Without Feeling The Actual Presence Of Jesus. His Personality Pulsates In Every Word. No Myth Is Filled With Such Life...theseus And Other Heroes Of His Type Lack The Authentic Vitality Of Jesus.

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 Fully Suffice. This Disgrace To Civilization Should Be Done Away With At Once. Heroism At Command, Senseless Brutality, Deplorable Love-of-country Stance, How Violently I Hate All This, How Despicable And Ignoble War Is; I Would Rather Be Torn To Shreds Than Be A Part Of So Base An Action! It Is My Conviction That Killing Under The Cloak Of War Is Nothing But An Act Of Murder.

No Matter How We May Single Out A Complex From Nature...its Theoretical Treatment Will Never Prove To Be Ultimately Conclusive... I Believe That This Process Of Deepening Of Theory Has No Limits.

Compassionate People Are Geniuses In The Art Of Living, More Necessary To The Dignity, Security, And Joy Of Humanity Than The Discoverers Of Knowledge.

Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge.

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.

My Religion Consists Of A Humble Admiration Of The Illimitable Superior Spirit Who Reveals Himself In The Slight Details We Are Able To Perceive With Our Frail And Feeble Mind.

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.

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.

Every Kind Of Peaceful Cooperation Among Men Is Primarily Based On Mutual Trust And Only Secondarily On Institutions Such As Courts Of Justice And Police.

The Important Thing Is Not To Stop Questioning. Curiosity Has Its Own Reason For Existing. One Cannot Help But Be In Awe When He Contemplates The Mysteries Of Eternity, Of Life, Of The Marvelous Structure Of Reality. It Is Enough If One Tries Merely To Comprehend A Little Of This Mystery Every Day. Never Lose A Holy Curiosity.

If You've Never Failed, You've Never Tried Anything New.

Short Inspirational Life

I Never Failed In Mathematics. Before I Was Fifteen I Had Mastered Differential And Integral Calculus.

To Me The Worst Thing Seems To Be A School Principally To Work With Methods Of Fear, Force And Artificial Authority. Such Treatment Destroys The Sound Sentiments, The Sincerity And The Self-confidence Of Pupils And Produces A Subservient Subject.

Self Confidence

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

There Have Already Been Published By The Bucketsful Such Brazen Lies And Utter Fictions About Me That I Would Long Since Have Gone To My Grave If I Had Allowed Myself To Pay Attention To Them.

The World Is An Evil Place To Live In. Not For Those Who Do Evil, But For Those Who Sit Back And Allow Evil To Occur.

I Believe, Indeed, That Overemphasis On The Purely Intellectual Attitude, Often Directed Solely To The Practical And Factual, In Our Education, Has Led Directly To The Impairment Of Ethical Values.

Nature Shows Us Only The Tail Of The Lion. But There Is No Doubt In My Mind That The Lion Belongs With It Even If He Cannot Reveal Himself To The Eye All At Once Because Of His Huge Dimension.

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.

Freedom Of Teaching And Of Opinion In Book Or Press Is The Foundation For The Sound And Natural Development Of Any People.

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 Would Be A Sad Situation If The Bag Was Better Than The Meat Wrapped In It.

The Longing To Behold This Pre-established Harmony [of Phenomena And Theoretical Principles] Is The Source Of The Inexhaustible Patience And Perseverance With Which Planck Has Devoted Himself ... The State Of Mind Which Enables A Man To Do Work Of This Kind Is Akin To That Of The Religious Worshiper Or The Lover; The Daily Effort Comes From No Deliberate Intention Or Program, But Straight From The Heart.

Human Beings Are Not Condemned, Because Of Their Biological Constitution, To Annihilate Each Other Or To Be At The Mercy Of A Cruel, Self-inflicted Fate.

The State Idea Is Not According To My Heart. I Cannot Understand Why It Is Needed. It Is Connected With Narrow-minded And Economic Obstacles. I Believe It Is Bad. I Have Always Been Against It.

Understanding Physics Is Child's Play When Compared To Understanding Child's Play.

Men Marry Women With The Hope They Will Never Change. Women Marry Men With The Hope They Will Change. Invariably They Are Both Disappointed.

Everything Has Changed Except The Way Man Thinks (when The Hydrogen Bomb Was Exploded)

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

Enough For Me Is The Mystery Of The Eternity Of Life, And The Inkling Of The Marvelous Structure Of Reality. There Is In This Neither A Will Nor A Goal, Nor A Must, But Only Sheer Being.

Eternity Of Life

You Cannot Prepare For War And Peace At The Same Time.

Our World Faces A Crisis As Yet Unperceived By Those Possessing Power To Make Great Decisions For Good Or Evil. The Unleashed Power Of The Atom Has Changed Everything Save Our Modes Of Thinking And We Thus Drift Toward Unparalleled Catastrophe.

I Have Just Got A New Theory Of Eternity.

Out Of Clutter, Find Simplicity.

Good Acts Are Like Good Poems. One May Easily Get Their Drift, But They Are Not Rationally Understood.

The Most Aggravating Thing About The Younger Generation Is That I No Longer Belong To It.

Younger Generation

Adversity Introduces A Man To Himself.

It Is My Fate To Be Considered An Authority, Since I Spent My Youth Rebelling Against It.

I Love Humanity But I Hate Humans

As The Area Of Light Expands, So Does The Perimeter Of Darkness.

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

It May Be Possible To Fight Intolerance, Stupidity, And Fanaticism Seperately, But When They Come Together There Is No Hope.

The Belief In An External World Independent Of The Perceiving Subject Is The Basis Of All Natural Science. Since, However, Sense Perception Only Gives Information Of This External World Or Of "physical Reality" Indirectly, We Can Only Grasp The Latter By Speculative Means. It Follows From This That Our Notions Of Physical Reality Can Never Be Final. We Must Always Be Ready To Change These Notions - That Is To Say, The Axiomatic Basis Of Physics - In Order To Do Justice To Perceived Facts In The Most Perfect Way.

We Should Take Care Not To Make The Intellect Our God; It Has, Of Course, Powerful Muscles, But No Personality.

If God Has Created The World, His Primary Worry Was Certainly Not To Make Its Understanding Easy For Us

Women Always Worry About Things That Men Forget; Men Always Worry About Things Women Remember.

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.

A Man Should Look For What Is, And Not For What He Thinks Should Be.

In The Beginning (if There Was Such A Thing), God Created Newton's Laws Of Motion Together With The Necessary Masses And Forces. This Is All; Everything Beyond This Follows From The Development Of Appropriate Mathematical Methods By Means Of Deduction.

The Only Real Valuable Thing Is Intuition.

Brief Is This Existence, As A Visit In A Strange House. The Path To Be Pursued Is Poorly Lit By A Flickering Consciousness.

Scientific Greatness Is Less A Matter Of Intelligence Than Character; If The Scientist Refuses To Compromise Or Accept Incomplete Answers And Persists In Grappling The Most Basic And Difficult Questions.

Difficult Questions

The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Ignorance Is Arrogance

Whether Or Not You Can Observe A Thing Depends Upon The Theory You Use. It Is The Theory Which Decides What Can Be Observed.

The Point Is To Develop The Childlike Inclination For Play And The Childlike Desire For Recognition And To Guide The Child Over To Important Fields For Society. Such A School Demands From The Teacher That He Be A Kind Of Artist In His Province.

The Thinking That Got Us To Where We Are Is Not The Thinking That Will Get Us To Where We Want To Be.

Man Is, At One And The Same Time, A Solitary Being And A Social Being.

The Universe Is A Friendly Place.

We Must Recognize What In Our Accepted Tradition Is Damaging To Our Fate And Dignity-and Shape Our Lives Accordingly.

I Do Not Like To State An Opinion On A Matter Unless I Know The Precise Facts.

I Believe That Gandhi’s Views Were The Most Enlightened Of All The Political Men In Our Time. We Should Strive To Do Things In His Spirit: Not To Use Violence In Fighting For Our Cause, But By Non-participation In Anything You Believe Is Evil.

It Is Intelligent To Have A Plan, But Neurotic To Fall In Love With It.

Falling In Love

A Bartender Is Just A Pharmacist With A Limited Inventory.

Dr. Einstein: Yes; But This Year The Answers Are Different.

In Every True Searcher Of Nature There Is A Kind Of Religious Reverence.

Pure Mathematics Is, In Its Way, The Poetry Of Logical Ideas.

I Agree With Your Remark About Loving Your Enemy As Far As Actions Are Concerned. But For Me The Cognitive Basis Is The Trust In An Unrestricted Causality. 'i Cannot Hate Him, Because He Must Do What He Does.' That Means For Me More Spinoza Than The Prophets.

But Nature Did Not Deem It Her Business To Make The Discovery Of Her Laws Easy For Us.

The Really Good Music, Whether Of The East Or Of The West, Cannot Be Analyzed.

A New Idea Comes Suddenly And In A Rather Intuitive Way, But Intuition Is Nothing But The Outcome Of Earlier Intellectual Experience.

A Thousand Things Can Prove Me Right And One Can Prove Me Wrong.

If The Rabble Continues To Occupy Itself With You, Then Simply Don't Read That Hogwash, But Rather Leave It For The Reptile From Whom It Has Been Fabricated.

Life Is Like Riding A Bicycle. If You Want To Stay Balanced You've Got To Keep Moving Forward.

I Know Not With What Weapons World War Iii Will Be Fought, But World War Iv Will Be Fought With Sticks And Stones.

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

My Opinion About Miller's Experiments Is The Following. ... Should The Positive Result Be Confirmed, Then The Special Theory Of Relativity And With It The General Theory Of Relativity, In Its Current Form, Would Be Invalid. Experimentum Summus Judex. Only The Equivalence Of Inertia And Gravitation Would Remain, However, They Would Have To Lead To A Significantly Different Theory.

What I Value In Life Is Quality Rather Then Quantity.

I Do Not Believe In The God Of Theology Who Rewards Good And Punishes Evil. My God Created Laws That Take Care Of That. His Universe Is Not Ruled By Wishful Thinking, But By Immutable Laws.

It Is A Miracle That Curiosity Survives Formal Education.

Genius Is When An Idea And The Execution Of That Idea Are Simultaneous.

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.

The Hardest Thing To Understand In The World Is The Income Tax.

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.

You Have To Learn The Rules Of The Game. And Then You Have To Play Better Than Anyone Else.

It Is Only To The Individual That A Soul Is Given. And The High Destiny Of The Individual Is To Serve Rather Than To Rule, Or To Impose Himself In Any Other Way.

Concerning Matter, We Have Been All Wrong. What We Have Called Matter Is Energy, Whose Vibration Has Been So Lowered As To Be Perceptible To The Senses. There Is No Matter.

I Believe In Spinoza's God, Who Reveals Himself In The Lawful Harmony Of The World, Not In A God Who Concerns Himself With The Fate And The Doings Of Mankind... To Rabbi Herbert Goldstein (1929)

Creativity Is Contagious. Pass It On.

The Value Of A Man Resides In What He Gives

Giving Not Receiving

The Step Between Genius And Insanity Is Very Short.

God Is Subtle But He Is Not Malicious.

The Idea Of A Being Who Interferes With The Sequence Of Events In The World Is Absolutely Impossible

On The Other Hand, The Concept Owes Its Meaning And Its Justification Exclusively To The Totality Of The Sense Impressions Which We Associate With It.

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.

Strange Is Our Situation Here Upon Earth.

Warfare Cannot Be Humanized.

What Interests Me Most Is Whether God Could Have Made The World Differently.

It Is Difficult To Say What Truth Is, But Sometimes It Is So Easy To Recognize A Falsehood.

The Woman Who Follows The Crowd Will Usually Believe That I Said This.

Following The Crowd

I Have Made The Bhagwad Gita As The Main Source Of My Inspiration And Guide For The Purpose Of Scientific Investigations And Formation Of My Theories.

I Do Not Believe That A Moral Philosophy Can Ever Be Founded On A Scientific Basis. … The Valuation Of Life And All Its Nobler Expressions Can Only Come Out Of The Soul’s Yearning Toward Its Own Destiny. Every Attempt To Reduce Ethics To Scientific Formulas Must Fail. Of That I Am Perfectly Convinced.

My Sailing System Set Sail, Make It Fast, No Thoughts Of Energy Or Velocity, Loll Back, Let Boat Drift.

We Are Slowed Down Sound And Light Waves, A Walking Bundle Of Frequencies Tuned Into The Cosmos. We Are Souls Dressed Up In Sacred Biochemical Garments And Our Bodies Are The Instruments Through Which Our Souls Play Their Music.

The Restriction Of Knowledge To An Elite Group Destroys The Spirit Of The Society And Leads To Its Intellectual Impoverishment.

I Appeal To All Men And Women, Whether They Be Eminent Or Humble, To Declare That They Will Refuse To Give Any Further Assistance To War Or The Preparation Of War.

Never Underestimate Your Own Ignorance.

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 We First Got Married, We Made A Pact. It Was This: In Our Life Together, It Was Decided I Would Make All Of The Big Decisions And My Wife Would Make All Of The Little Decisions. For Fifty Years, We Have Held True To That Agreement. I Believe That Is The Reason For The Success In Our Marriage. However, The Strange Thing Is That In Fifty Years, There Hasn’t Been One Big Decision.

The World Is Not Full Of Evil Because Of Those Who Do Wrong. It Is Full Of Evil Because Of Those Who Do Nothing.

Words Of Wisdom

To Punish Me For My Contempt For Authority, Fate Made Me An Authority Myself.

To The Extent Math Refers To Reality, We Are Not Certain To The Extent We Are Certain, Math Does Not Refer To Reality.

Do You Remember How Electrical Currents And 'unseen Waves' Were Laughed At? The Knowledge About Man Is Still In Its Infancy.

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.

Futility Of Life

Dancers Are The Athletes Of God.

Ever Since Childhood I Have Scorned The Commonplace Limits So Often Set Upon Human Ambition. Possessions, Outward Success, Publicity, Luxury - To Me These Have Always Been Contemptible. I Believe That A Simple And Unassuming Manner Of Life Is Best For Everyone; Best Both For The Body And The Mind

Any Society Which Does Not Insist Upon Respect For All Life Must Necessarily Decay.

Betterment Of Conditions The World Over Is Not Essentially Dependent On Scientific Knowledge But On The Fulfillment Of Human Traditions And Ideals.

Education Is Only A Ladder To Gather Fruit From The Tree Of Knowledge, Not The Fruit Itself

An Attempt At Visualizing The Fourth Dimension: Take A Point, Stretch It Into A Line, Curl It Into A Circle, Twist It Into A Sphere, And Punch Through The Sphere.

In The Past It Never Occurred To Me That Every Casual Remark Of Mine Would Be Snatched Up And Recorded. Otherwise I Would Have Crept Further Into My Shell.

A Person Starts To Live When He Can Live Outside Himself.

In Scientific Thinking Are Always Present Elements Of Poetry. Science And Music Requires A Thought Homogeneous.

I Have Repeatedly Said That In My Opinion The Idea Of A Personal God Is A Childlike One.

Problems Cannot Be Solved By Thinking Within The Framework In Which The Problems Were Created.

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

In The Shadow Of The Atomic Bomb It Has Become Even More Apparent That All Men Are, Indeed, Brothers.

I Want To Know God's Thoughts.

By Academic Freedom I Understand The Right To Search For Truth And To Publish And Teach What One Holds To Be True. This Right Also Implies A Duty: One Must Not Conceal Any Part Of What One Has Recognized To Be True.

The Only Thing That Interferes With My Learning Is My Education.

Infinite Striving To Be The Best Is Man's Duty; It Is Its Own Reward. Everything Else Is In God's Hands. It's Not That I'm So Smart, It's Just That I Stay With Problems Longer.

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

Let Every Man Judge According To His Own Standards, By What He Has Himself Read, Not By What Others Tell Him.

What Is The Meaning Of Human Life, Or Of Organic Life Altogether? To Answer This Question At All Implies A Religion.

To One Bent On Age, Death Will Come As A Release. I Feel This Quite Strongly Now That I Have Grown Old Myself And Have Come To Regard Death Like An Old Debt, At Long Last To Be Discharged.

God Doesn't; Shoot Crap With The Universe.your Innermost Thoughts Are Beliefs That Unfold As Your Universe.

Time Does Not Exist - We Invented It

If My Theory Of Relativity Is Proven Successful, Germany Will Claim Me As A German And France Will Declare Me A Citizen Of The World. Should My Theory Prove Untrue, France Will Say That I Am A German, And Germany Will Declare That I Am A Jew.

The Horizon Of Many People Is A Circle With A Radius Of Zero. They Call This Their Point Of View.

I Am Satisfied With The Mystery Of The Eternity Of Life.

Eternity Of Life

If There Is A God

Something Deeply Hidden Had To Be Behind Things.

In Art, And In The Higher Ranges Of Science, There Is A Feeling Of Harmony Which Underlies All Endeavor. There Is No True Greatness In Art Or Science Without That Sense Of Harmony.

Common Sense Invents And Constructs No Less Than Its Own Field Than Science Does In Its Domain. It Is, However, In The Nature Of Common Sense Not To Be Aware Of This Situation.

Out Of The Multitude Of Our Sense Experiences We Take, Mentally And Arbitrarily, Certain Repeatedly Occurring Complexes Of Sense Impression (partly In Conjunction With Sense Impressions Which Are Interpreted As Signs For Sense Experiences Of Others), And We Attribute To Them A Meaning The Meaning Of The Bodily Object.

My Success Wasn't So Much Due To Intelligence, But The Fact That I Stuck With Problems Longer.

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.

One Of The Strongest Motives That Lead Men To Art And Science Is Escape From Everyday Life With Its Painful Crudity And Hopeless Dreariness, From The Fetters Of One's Own Ever-shifting Desires. A Finely Tempered Nature Longs To Escape From The Personal Life Into The World Of Objective Perception And Thought.

Mozart's Music Is So Pure And Beautiful That I See It As A Reflection Of The Inner Beauty Of The Universe.

Most People Stop Looking When They Find The Proverbial Needle In The Haystack. I Would Continue Looking To See If There Were Other Needles.

The Real Difficulty, The Difficulty Which Has Baffled The Sages Of All Times, Is Rather This: How Can We Make Our Teaching So Potent In The Motional Life Of Man, That Its Influence Should Withstand The Pressure Of The Elemental Psychic Forces In The Individual?

Everything That Can Be Counted Does Not Necessarily Count; Everything That Counts Cannot Necessarily Be Counted.

In The Middle Of Adversity There Is Great Opportunity.

Everybody Should Be Ashamed Who Uses The Wonders Of Science And Engineering Without Thinking And Having Mentally Realized Not More Of It Than A Cow Realizes Of The Botany Of The Plants Which It Eats With Pleasure.

Whoever Undertakes To Set Himself Up As A Judge Of Truth And Knowledge Is Shipwrecked By The Laughter Of The Gods.

The Led Must Not Be Compelled; They Must Be Able To Choose Their Own Leader.

What I'm Really Interested In Is Whether God Could Have Made The World In A Different Way; That Is, Whether The Necessity Of Logical Simplicity Leaves Any Freedom At All.

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.

One Can Only Continue To Expect To Be Read If One Omits Everything That Is Unimportant.

My Pacifism Is Not Based On Any Intellectual Theory But On A Deep Antipathy To Every Form Of Cruelty And Hatred.

Everything Is Energy And That’s All There Is To It.

Learning Is Experience. Everything Else Is Just Information.

The Pursuit Of Knowledge For Its Own Sake, An Almost Fanatical Love Of Justice And The Desire For Personal Independence -- These Are The Features Of The Jewish Tradition Which Make Me Thank My Stars That I Belong To It.

Jewish Tradition

Relativity Is A Purely Scientific Matter And Has Nothing To Do With Religion.

Schools Need Not Preach Political Doctrine To Defend Democracy. If They Shape Men Capable Of Critical Thought And Trained In Social Attitudes, That Is All That Is Necessary.

Hitler Appeared, A Man With Limited Intellectual Abilities And Unfit For Any Useful Work, Bursting With Envy And Bitterness Against All Whom Circumstance And Nature Had Favored Over Him....in His Desperate Ambition For Power He Discovered That His Speeches, Confused And Pervaded With Hate As They Were, Received Wild Acclaim By Those Whose Situation And Orientation Resembled His Own. He Picked Up This Human Flotsam On The Streets And In The Taverns And Organized Them Around Himself. This Is The Way He Launched His Political Career.

Everybody Is A Genius. But If You Judge A Fish By Its Ability To Climb A Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing That It Is Stupid.

Mathematics Are Well And Good But Nature Keeps Dragging Us Around By The Nose.

Men Should Continue To Fight, But They Should Fight For Things Worth While, Not For Imaginary Geographical Lines, Racial Prejudices And Private Greed Draped In The Color's Of Patriotism.

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.

I No Longer Believed In The Known God Of The Bible, But Rather In The Mysterious God Expressed In Nature.

It Is Impossible To Get Anywhere Without Sinning Against Reason.

Inner Freedom Is An Infrequent Gift Of Nature And A Worthy Object For The Individual.

Even The Scholars In Various Lands Have Been Acting As If Their Brains Had Been Amputated.

This Has Been Done Elegantly By Minkowski; But Chalk Is Cheaper Than Grey Matter, And We Will Do It As It Comes.

In My Opinion There Is No Other Salvation For Civilization And Even For The Human Race Than The Creation Of A World Government With Security On The Basis Of Law. As Long As There Are Sovereign States With Their Separate Armaments And Armament Secrets, New World Wars Cannot Be Avoided.

World Government

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.

Experience Is Knowledge. All The Rest Is Information.

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

The Unleashed Power Of The Atom Has Changed Everything Except Our Thinking. Thus, We Are Drifting Toward Catastrophe Beyond Conception. We Shall Require A Substantially New Manner Of Thinking If Mankind Is To Survive.

Where There Is Love, There Is No Imposition.

Don't Dream Of Being A Good Person, Be A Human Being Is Valuable And Gives Value To Life.

All Such Action Would Cease If Those Powerful Elemental Forces Were To Cease Stirring Within Us.

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.

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

No One But A Theorist Believes His Theory; Everyone Puts Faith In A Laboratory Result But The Experimenter Himself.

If You Want To Live A Happy Life, Tie It To A Goal, Not To People Or Objects.

Nothing Happens Unless Something Moves.

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

Weakness Of Attitude Becomes Weakness Of Character; It Becomes Lack Of Power To Act With Courage Proportionate To Danger. All This Must Lead To The Destruction Of Our Intellectual Life Unless The Danger Summons Up Strong Personalities Able To Fill The Lukewarm And Discouraged With New Strength And Resolution.

The Conflict That Exists Today Is No More Than An Old-style Struggle For Power, Once Again Presented To Mankind In Semireligious Trappings. The Difference Is That, This Time, The Development Of Atomic Power Has Imbued The Struggle With A Ghostly Character; For Both Parties Know And Admit That, Should The Quarrel Deteriorate Into Actual War, Mankind Is Doomed.

You Think You Have Troubles With Mathematics . . . I Assure You Mine Are Still Bigger.

Had I Known That The Germans Would Not Succeed In Producing An Atomic Bomb, I Would Not Have Lifted A Finger.

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