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Somebody Who Only Reads Newspapers And At Best Books Of Contemporary Authors Looks To Me Like An Extremely Near-sighted Person Who Scorns Eyeglasses. He Is Completely Dependent On The Prejudices And Fashions Of His Times, Since He Never Gets To See Or Hear Anything Else.

-Albert Einstein

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Somebody Who Only Reads

Albert Einstein

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Somebody Who Only Reads Newspapers And At Best Books Of Contemporary Authors Looks To Me Like An Extremely Near-sighted Person Who Scorns Eyeglasses. He Is Completely Dependent On The Prejudices And Fashions Of His Times, Since He Never Gets To See Or Hear Anything Else.

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More From Albert Einstein

Necessity Is The Mother Of All Invention.

I Cannot Imagine A God Who Rewards And Punishes The Objects Of His Creation, Whose Purposes Are Modeled After Our Own -- A God, In Short, Who Is But A Reflection Of Human Frailty. Neither Can I Believe That The Individual Survives The Death Of His Body, Although Feeble Souls Harbor Such Thoughts Through Fear Or Ridiculous Egotisms.

A Man's Value To The Community Primarily Depends On How Far His Feelings, Thoughts, And Actions Are Directed Towards Promoting The Good Of His Fellows.

Where The World Ceases To Be The Scene Of Our Personal Hopes And Wishes, Where We Face It As Free Beings Admiring, Asking And Observing, There We Enter The Realm Of Art And Science.

One Strength Of The Communist System Of The East Is That It Has Some Of The Character Of A Religion And Inspires The Emotions Of A Religion.

The Only Way To Escape The Corruptible Effect Of Praise Is To Go On Working.

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.

The Power Of Imagination Is The Ultimate Creative Power.. No Doubt About That. While Knowledge Defines All We Currently Know And Understand.. Imagination Points To All We Might Yet Discover And Create. Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge. Your Imagination Is Your Preview Of Life's Coming Attractions

Einstein Didn't Speak Until He Was Four, Leading Most Of His Teachers To Believe He Was Crazy. That Is Until He Whipped Out The Theory Of Relativity. Bayum! Showed You Guys.

Failing Isn't Bad When You Learn What Not To Do.

Of All The Communities Available To Us, There Is Not One I Would Want To Devote Myself To Except For The Society Of The True Seekers, Which Has Very Few Living Members At Any One Time.

In Conclusion I Wish To Say That In Working At The Problem Here Dealt With I Have Had The Loyal Assistance Of My Friend And Colleague M. Besso, And That I Am Indebted To Him For Several Valuable Suggestions.

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)

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.

Since That Deluge Of Newspaper Articles I Have Been So Flooded With Questions, Invitations, Suggestions, That I Keep Dreaming I Am Roasting In Hell, And The Mailman Is The Devil Eternally Yelling At Me, Showering Me With More Bundles Of Letters At My Head Because I Have Not Answered The Old Ones.

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

A Man Has To Work So Hard So That Something Of His Personality Stays Alive. A Tomcat Has It So Easy, He Has Only To Spray And His Presence Is There For Years On Rainy Days.

I Do Not Play Games. There Is Not Time For It. When I Get Through With Work, I Don't Want Anything That Requires The Working Of The Mind.

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

Words Of Wisdom

Everything That The Human Race Has Done And Thought Is Concerned With The Satisfaction Of Deeply Felt Needs And The Assuagement Of Pain. One Has To Keep This Constantly In Mind If One Wishes To Understand Spiritual Movements And Their Development. Feeling And Longing Are The Motive Force Behind All Human Endeavor And Human Creation, In However Exalted A Guise The Latter May Present Themselves To Us.

You Must Be Aware That Most Men (and Also Not Only A Few Women) Are By Nature Not Monogamous. This Nature Makes Itself Even More Forceful When Tradition And Circumstance Stand In An Individual's Way.

You Believe In The God Who Plays Dice, And I In Complete Law And Order In A World That Objectively Exists, And Which I, In A Wildly Speculative Way, Am Trying To Capture. ... Even The Great Initial Success Of The Quantum Theory Does Not Make Me Believe In The Fundamental Dice-game, Although I Am Well Aware That Our Younger Colleagues Interpret This As A Consequence Of Senility. No Doubt The Day Will Come When We Will See Whose Instinctive Attitude Was The Correct One.

One Should Guard Against Preaching To Young People Success In The Customary Form As The Main Aim In Life. The Most Important Motive For Work In School And In Life Is Pleasure In Work, Pleasure In Its Result, And The Knowledge Of The Value Of The Result To The Community.

Congratulations

Experience Alone Can Decide On Truth.

In Living Through This Great Epoch, It Is Difficult To Reconcile Oneself To The Fact That One Belongs To That Mad, Degenerate Species That Boasts Of Its Free Will. How I Wish That Somewhere There Existed An Island For Those Who Are Wise And Of Good Will. In Such A Place Even I Should Be An Ardent Patriot!

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.

The Word 'god' Is For Me Nothing More Than The Expression And Product Of Human Weaknesses, And Religious Scripture A Collection Of Honourable, But Still Primitive Legends Which Are Nevertheless Pretty Childish. No Interpretation, No Matter How Subtle, Can (for Me) Change This.

The Discovery Of Nuclear Reactions Need Not Bring About The Destruction Of Mankind Any More Than The Discovery Of Matches.

Concern For Man And His Fate Must Always Form The Chief Interest Of All Technical Endeavors. Never Forget This In The Midst Of Your Diagrams And Equations.

Knowledge Of What Is Does Not Open The Door Directly To What Should Be.

Failure Is Success In Progress

It Would Be Possible To Describe Everything Scientifically, But It Would Make No Sense; It Would Be Without Meaning, As If You Described A Beethoven Symphony As A Variation Of Wave Pressure.

My Sense Of God Is My Sense Of Wonder About The Universe.

Sense Of Wonder

Imagination Is More Powerful Than Knowledge.

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.

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

Since I Have Introduced This Term I Had Always A Bad Conscience. . . . I Cannot Help To Feel It Strongly And I Am Unable To Believe That Such An Ugly Thing Should Be Realized In Nature.

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

Any Fool Can Know. The Point Is To Understand.

But Science Can Only Be Created By Those Who Are Thoroughly Imbued With The Aspiration Toward Truth And Understanding. This Source Of Feeling, However, Springs From The Sphere Of Religion. To This There Also Belongs The Faith In The Possibility That The Regulations Valid For The World Of Existence Are Rational, That Is, Comprehensible To Reason. I Cannot Conceive Of A Genuine Scientist Without That Profound Faith. The Situation May Be Expressed By An Image: Science Without Religion Is Lame, Religion Without Science Is Blind.

I Have Little Patience With Scientists Who Take A Board Of Wood, Look For Its Thinnest Part, And Drill A Great Number Of Holes Where Drilling Is Easy.

The Environment Is Everything That Isn't Me.

... One Does People The Best Service By Giving Them Some Elevating Work To Do And Thus Indirectly Elevating Them.

The World Is So Full Of Possibilities That Dogmatism Is Simply Indecent.

Classical Thermodynamics ... Is The Only Physical Theory Of Universal Content Which I Am Convinced ... Will Never Be Overthrown.

My Political Ideal Is Democracy. Let Every Man Be Respected As An Individual And No Man Idolized.

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

A Table, A Chair, A Bowl Of Fruit And A Violin; What Else Does A Man Need To Be Happy.

I Rarely Think In Words At All.

Every Day, Man Is Making Bigger And Better Fool-proof Things, And Every Day, Nature Is Making Bigger And Better Fools. So Far, I Think Nature Is Winning.

It Is Our American Habit If We Find The Foundations Of Our Educational Structure Unsatisfactory To Add Another Story Or Wing.

Time Is Not At All What It Seems. It Does Not Flow In Only One Direction, And The Future Exists Simultaneously With The Past.

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.

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.

We Cannot Despair About Mankind Knowing That Mozart Was A Man.

I Know Very Well That Many Scientists Consider Dowsing As They Do Astrology, As A Type Of Ancient Superstition. According To My Conviction This Is, Unjustified. The Dowsing Rod Is A Simple Instrument Which Shows The Uncanny Reaction Of The Human Nervous System To Certain Factors Which Are Unknown To Us At This Time.

The Process Of Scientific Discovery Is, In Effect, A Continual Flight From Wonder.

Fortunate Newton, Happy Childhood Of Science. Nature To Him Was An Open Book. He Stands Before Us Strong, Certain, And Alone.

I Am Content In My Later Years. I Have Kept My Good Humor And Take Neither Myself Nor The Next Person Seriously.

Honestly, I Cannot Understand What People Mean When They Talk About The Freedom Of The Human Will. I Have A Feeling, For Instance, That I Will Something Or Other; But What Relation This Has With Freedom I Cannot Understand At All. I Feel That I Will To Light My Pipe And I Do It; But How Can I Connect This Up With The Idea Of Freedom? What Is Behind The Act Of Willing To Light The Pipe ? Another Act Of Willing?

I Never Said Half The Crap People Said I Did.

Force Always Attracts Men Of Low Morality.

"one Becomes A Deeply Religious Nonbeliever...". It Is Clear From The Original That It Is Definitely Not "i".

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.

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

Thinking Is To Man What Flying Is To Birds. Don’t Follow The Example Of A Chicken When You Could Be A Lark.

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

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.

Smoke Like A Chimney, Work Like A Horse, Eat Without Thinking, Go For A Walk Only In Really Pleasant Company.

Only World Law Can Assure Progress Towards A Civilized Peaceful Community.

It Is Also A Natural Thing For A Serious Young Man That He Should Form For Himself As Precise An Idea As Possible Of The Goal Of His Desires.

If I Am Right The Germans Will Say I Was A German, And The French Will Say I Was A Jew; If I Am Wrong The Germans Will Say I Was A Jew And The French Will Say I Was A German.

Philosophers Play With The Word, Like A Child With A Doll.... It Does Not Mean That Everything In Life Is Relative.

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

The Individual Feels The Vanity Of Human Desires And Aims, And The Nobility And Marvelous Order Which Are Revealed In Nature And In The World Of Thought. He Feels The Individual Destiny As An Imprisonment And Seeks To Experience The Totality Of Existence As A Unity Full Of Significance.

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.

I Have Always Loved Solitude, A Trait Which Tends To Increase With Age.

There Are Actually Two Approaches To Reside Your Daily Life. One Is As If Absolutely Nothing Is Really A Miracle. The Other Is As If Every Little Thing Is A Wonder

Evil Does Not Exist Sir, Or At Least It Does Not Exist Unto Itself. Evil Is Simply The Absence Of God. It Is Just Like Darkness And Cold, A Word That Man Has Created To Describe The Absence Of God. God Did Not Create Evil. Evil Is Not Like Faith, Or Love That Exist Just As Does Light And Heat. Evil Is The Result Of What Happens When Man Does Not Have God's Love Present In His Heart. It's Like The Cold That Comes When There Is No Heat Or The Darkness That Comes When There Is No Light.

Check Out Not To Become A Man Or Woman Of Achievement, But Instead Seek To Become A Particular Person Of Price.

The Ability To Portray People In Still Life And In Motion Requires The Highest Measure Of Intuition And Talent.

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

Quantum Mechanics Is Certainly Imposing. But An Inner Voice Tells Me That This Is Not Yet The Real Thing. The Theory Says A Lot, But Does Not Bring Us Any Closer To The Secrets Of The "old One." I, At Any Rate, Am Convinced That He Is Not Playing At Dice.

It Is Little Short Of A Miracle That Modern Methods Of Instruction Have Not Already Completely Strangled The Holy Curiosity Of Inquiry.... I Believe That One Could Even Deprive A Healthy Beast Of Prey Of Its Voraciousness If One Could Force It With A Whip To Eat Continuously Whether It Were Hungry Or Not.

Great Spirits Have Always Found Violent Opposition From Mediocre Minds. The Latter Cannot Understand It When A Man Does Not Thoughtlessly Submit To Hereditary Prejudices But Honestly And Courageously Uses His Intelligence.

When The Special Theory Of Relativity Began To Germinate In Me, I Was Visited By All Sorts Of Nervous Conflicts... I Used To Go Away For Weeks In A State Of Confusion.

I Believe That We Don't Need To Worry About What Happens After This Life, As Long As We Do Our Duty Here-to Love And To Serve.

I Do Not Believe In Race As Such. Race Is A Fraud. All Modern People Are The Conglomeration Of So Many Ethnic Mixtures That No Pure Race Remains.

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

My Internal And External Life Depend So Much On The Work Of Others That I Must Make An Extreme Effort To Give As Much As I Receive.

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.

One Who Scorns The Power Of Intuition Will Never Rise Above The Ranks Of Journeyman Calculator.

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.

I Don't Try To Imagine A Personal God; It Suffices To Stand In Awe At The Structure Of The World, Insofar As It Allows Our Inadequate Senses To Appreciate It.

Few People Are Capable Of Expressing With Equanimity Opinions Which Differ From The Prejudices Of Their Social Environment. Most People Are Even Incapable Of Forming Such Opinions.

In The Matter Of Physics, The First Lessons Should Contain Nothing But What Is Experimental And Interesting To See. A Pretty Experiment Is In Itself Often More Valuable Than Twenty Formulae Extracted From Our Minds.

Persistence Is The Most Powerful Force On Earth, It Can Move Mountains.

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.

For Every One Billion Particles Of Antimatter There Were One Billion And One Particles Of Matter. And When The Mutual Annihilation Was Complete, One Billionth Remained - And That's Our Present Universe.

... A Person Who Is Religiously Enlightened Appears To Me To Be One Who Has, To The Best Of His Ability, Liberated Himself From The Fetters Of His Selfish Desires And Is Preoccupied With Thoughts, Feelings, And Aspirations To Which He Clings Because Of Their Superpersonal Value.

Man, Surrounded By Facts, Permitting Himself No Surprise, No Intuitive Flash, No Great Hypothesis, No Risk, Is In A Locked Cell. Ignorance Cannot Seal The Mind And Imagination More Securely.

To Act Intelligently In Human Affairs Is Only Possible If An Attempt Is Made To Understand The Thoughts, Motives, And Apprehension Of One's Opponent So Fully That One Can See The World Through Their Eyes.

One Thing I Have Learned In A Long Life: That All Our Science, Measured Against Reality, Is Primitive And Childlike -- And Yet It Is The Most Precious Thing We Have.

The Aim (of Education) Must Be The Training Of Independently Acting And Thinking Individuals Who, However, See In The Service To The Community Their Highest Life Problem.

If I Had An Hour To Solve A Problem And My Life Depended On The Solution, I Would Spend The First 55 Minutes Determining The Proper Question To Ask, For Once I Know The Proper Question, I Could Solve The Problem In Less Than Five Minutes.

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

More The Knowledge Lesser The Ego, Lesser The Knowledge, More The Ego.

We Still Do Not Know One Thousandth Of One Percent Of What Nature Has Revealed To Us.

The Ideas That Have Lighted My Way Have Been Kindness, Beauty And Truth.

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

Imagination Is Everything. It Is The Preview Of Life's Coming Attractions.

Nor Do I Take Into Account A Danger Of Starting A Chain Reaction Of A Scope Great Enough To Destroy Part Or All Of The Planet...but It Is Not Necessary To Imagine The Earth Being Destroyed Like A Nova By A Stellar Explosion To Understand Vividly The Grow Ing Scope Of Atomic War And To Recognize That Unless Another War Is Prevented It Is Likely To Bring Destruction On A Scale Never Before Held Possible, And Even Now Hardly Conceived, And That Little Civilization Would Survive It.

I Think That A Particle Must Have A Separate Reality Independent Of The Measurements. That Is An Electron Has Spin, Location And So Forth Even When It Is Not Being Measured. I Like To Think That The Moon Is There Even If I Am Not Looking At It.

Nuclear Power Is One Hell Of A Way To Boil Water

Time And Space Are Not Conditions Of Existence, Time And Space Is A Model For Thinking

One May Say The Eternal Mystery Of The World Is Its Comprehensibility.

How Vile And Despicable War Seems To Me! I Would Rather Be Hacked To Pieces Than Take Part In Such An Abominable Business.

The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Ignorance Is Arrogance

The Most Beautiful Emotion We Can Experience Is The Mystical. It Is The Power Of All True Art And Science. He To Whom This Emotion Is A Stranger, Who Can No Longer Wonder And Stand Rapt In Awe, Is As Good As Dead. To Know That What Is Impenetrable To Us Really Exists, Manifesting Itself As The Highest Wisdom And The Most Radiant Beauty, Which Our Dull Faculties Can Comprehend Only In Their Most Primitive Forms - This Knowledge, This Feeling, Is At The Center Of True Religiousness. In This Sense, And In This Sense Only, I Belong To The Rank Of Devoutly Religious Men.

One Scientific Epoch Ended And Another Began With James Clerk Maxwell.

Capitalism Creates A Huge Community Of Producers Who Are Unceasingly Striving To Deprive Each Other Of The Fruits Of Their Collective Labor, And An Oligarchy That Cannot Be Effectively Checked Even By A Democratically Organized Society....the Subjugation Is Not By Force But Because The Privileged Class Has Long Ago Established A System Of Values By Which The People Were Thenceforth, To A Large Extent Unconsciously, Guided In Their Social Behavior.

Turkish Soldiers Are Very Brave. They Love Their Homeland And They Do Not Hesitate To Give Their Lives For It If Necessary.

You See, Wire Telegraph Is A Kind Of A Very, Very Long Cat. You Pull His Tail In New York And His Head Is Meowing In Los Angeles. Do You Understand This? And Radio Operates Exactly The Same Way: You Send Signals Here, They Receive Them There. The Only Difference Is That There Is No Cat.

My Primary Process Of Perceiving Is Muscular And Visual.

Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge.

Don't Let The Measurable Drive Out The Relevant

Creativity Is The Residue Of Time Wasted.

It Stands To The Everlasting Credit Of Science That By Acting On The Human Mind It Has Overcome Man's Insecurity Before Himself And Before Nature.

I Have Only Two Rules Which I Regard As Principles Of Conduct. The First Is: Have No Rules. The Second Is: Be Independent Of The Opinion Of Others.

The Importance Of A Problem Should Not Be Judged By The Number Of Pages Devoted To It.

I Fully Agree With You About The Significance And Educational Value Of As Well As History And Philosophy Of Science. So Many People Today - And Even Professional - Seem To Me Like Someone Who Has Seen Thousands Of Trees But Has Never Seen A Forest. A Knowledge Of The Historic And Philosophical Background Gives That Kind Of Independence From Prejudices Of His Generation From Which Most Scientists Are Suffering. This Independence Created By Philosophical Insight Is - In My Opinion - The Mark Of Distinction Between A Mere Artisan Or Specialist And A Real Seeker After Truth.

The Wireless Telegraph Is Not Difficult To Understand. The Ordinary Telegraph Is Like A Very Long Cat. You Pull The Tail In New York, And It Meows In Los Angeles. The Wireless Is The Same, Only Without The Cat.

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?".

If I Had Known They Were Going To Do This, I Would Have Become A Shoemaker.

It Has Become Appallingly Obvious That Our Technology Has Exceeded Our Humanity.

Relativity Applies To Physics, Not Ethics.

Ethics And Morals

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.

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.

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

I Find It Difficult To Believe That I Belong To Such An Idiotic, Rotten Species - The Species That Actually Boasts Of Its Freedom Of Will, Heroism On Command, Senseless Violence, And All Of The Loathsome Nonsense That Goes By The Name Of Patriotism.

In Music I Do Not Look For Logic. I Am Quite Intuitive On The Whole And Know No Theories. I Never Like A Work If I Cannot Intuitively Grasp Its Inner Unity (architecture).

I Want To Know All God's Thoughts.

The Fact That Man Produces A Concept "i" Besides The Totality Of His Mental And Emotional Experiences Or Perceptions Does Not Prove That There Must Be Any Specific Existence Behind Such A Concept. We Are Succumbing To Illusions Produced By Our Self-created Language, Without Reaching A Better Understanding Of Anything. Most Of So-called Philosophy Is Due To This Kind Of Fallacy.

There Is No Place In This New Kind Of Physics Both For The Field And Matter, For The Field Is The Only Reality.

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

Inspirational Love

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.

I Have Never Belonged Wholeheartedly To Country Or State, To My Circle Of Friends Or Even To My Own Family... Such Isolation Is Sometimes Bitter, But I Do Not Regret Being Cut Off From The Understanding And Sympathy Of Other Men. I Lose Something By It,to Be Sure, But I Am Compensated For It In Being Rendered Independent Of The Customs, Opinions And Prejudices Of Others, And Am Not Tempted To Rest My Peace Of Mind Upon Such Shifting Foundations.

It's Not That I'm So Smart, It's Just That I Stay With Problems Longer.

Out Of Clutter, Find Simplicity.

The True Definition Of Madness Is Repeating The Same Action, Over And Over, Hoping For A Different Result.

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

An Evening Everyone Agrees, Is A Lost Evening.

The World As We Have Created It Is A Process Of Our Thinking. It Cannot Be Changed Without Changing Our Thinking.

If [quantum Theory] Is Correct, It Signifies The End Of Physics As A Science.

What Is Significant In One's Own Existence One Is Hardly Aware, And It Certainly Should Not Bother The Other Fellow. What Does A Fish Know About The Water In Which He Swims All His Life?

As I Look Back Over The Truly Crucial Events In My Life I Realize That They Were Not Planned Long In Advance. Albert Einstein Said, 'there Are Only Two Ways To Live Your Life. One Is As Though Nothing Is A Miracle. The Other Is As Though Everything Is.'

The Equation For Ego Is: One Over Knowledge.

The Future Is An Unknown, But A Somewhat Predictable Unknown. To Look To The Future We Must First Look Back Upon The Past. That Is Where The Seeds Of The Future Were Planted. I Never Think Of The Future. It Comes Soon Enough.

The Press, Which Is Mostly Controlled By Vested Interests, Has An Excessive Influence On Public Opinion.

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

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

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. I Am Not Thinking So Much Of The Dangers With Which Technical Progress Has Directly Confronted Mankind, As Of The Stifling Of Mutual Human Considerations By A 'matter-of-fact' Habit Of Thought Which Has Come To Lie Like A Killing Frost Upon Human Relations. Without 'ethical Culture' There Is No Salvation For Humanity.

I Myself Should Also Be Dead Already, But I Am Still Here.

It Is Certainly True That Principles Cannot Be More Securely Founded Than On Experience And Consciously Clear Thinking.

The Difference Between Stupidity And Genius Is That Genius Has Its Limits.

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

... It Is A Welcome Symptom In An Age Which Is Commonly Denounced As Materialistic, That It Makes Heroes Of Men Whose Goals Lie Wholly In The Intellectual And Moral Sphere.

Intuitive Powers Played A Central Role In My Scientific Work, Not Wild Speculation, Yet A Valued Resource When No Other Approach Was Available.

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

You Cannot Simultaneously Prevent And Prepare For War.

Sometimes One Pays Most For The Things One Gets For Nothing.

I Believe That A Simple And Unassuming Manner Of Life Is Best For Everyone, Best Both For The Body And The Mind.

O, Youth: Do You Know That Yours Is Not The First Generation To Yearn For A Life Full Of Beauty And Freedom?

Do You Believe In Immortality? No, And One Life Is Enough For Me.

Humiliation And Mental Oppression By Ignorant And Selfish Teachers Wreak Havoc In The Youthful Mind That Can Never Be Undone And Often Exert A Baleful Influence In Later Life.

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

If We Trace Out What We Behold And Experience Through The Language Of Logic, We Are Doing Science; If We Show It In Forms Whose Interrelashionships Are Not Accessible To Our Conscious Thought But We Are Intuitively Recognized As Meaningful, We Are Doing Art.

A Photograph Never Grows Old. You And I Change, People Change All Through The Months And Years But A Photograph Always Remains The Same. How Nice To Look At A Photograph Of Mother Or Father Taken Many Years Ago. You See Them As You Remember Them. But As People Live On, They Change Completely. That Is Why I Think A Photograph Can Be Kind.

Pure Logical Thinking Cannot Yield Us Any Knowledge Of The Empirical World. All Knowledge Of Reality Starts From Experience And Ends In It.

The Only Justification For Our Concepts And Systems Of Concepts Is That They Serve To Represent The Complex Of Our Experiences; Beyond This They Have Not Legitimacy.

If I Were To Start Taking Care Of My Grooming, I Would No Longer Be My Own Self... So The Hell With It... I Will Continue To Be Unconcerned About It, Which Surely Has The Advantage That I'm Left In Peace By Many A Fop Who Would Otherwise Come To See Me.

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.

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

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

When U Knw Ur Limits U Go Byond Them

Thanks To My Fortunate Idea Of Introducing The Relativity Principle Into Physics, You (and Others) Now Enormously Overrate My Scientific Abilities, To The Point Where This Makes Me Quite Uncomfortable.

The Ideals Which Have Always Shone Before Me And Filled Me With The Joy Of Living Are Goodness, Beauty, And Truth.

Work Is The Only Thing That Gives Substance To Life.

Insofar As We May At All Claim That Slavery Has Been Abolished Today, We Owe Its Abolition To The Practical Consequences Of Science

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

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

Where There Is Love, There Is No Imposition.

Every Serious Scientific Worker Is Painfully Conscious Of This Involuntary Relegation To An Ever-narrowing Sphere Of Knowledge, Which Threatens To Deprive The Investigator Of His Broad Horizon And Degrades Him To The Level Of A Mechanic.

It Is Difficult Even To Attach A Precise Meaning To The Term "scientific Truth." So Different Is The Meaning Of The Word "truth" According To Whether We Are Dealing With A Fact Of Experience, A Mathematical Proposition Or A Scientific Theory. "religious Truth" Conveys Nothing Clear To Me At All.

X + Y + Z X Is Work. Y Is Play. Z Is Keep Your Mouth Shut.

Keeping Your Mouth Shut

It Is True That My Parents Were Worried Because I Began To Speak Fairly Late, So That They Even Consulted A Doctor. I Can't Say How Old I Was - But Surely Not Less Than Three.

My Mind Is My Laboratory.

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.

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Thomas Kretschmann

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