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The Satisfaction Of Physical Needs Is Indeed The Indispensable Pre-condition Of A Satisfactory Existence, But In Itself It Is Not Enough. In Order To Be Content, Men Must Also Have The Possibility Of Developing Their Intellectual And Artistic Powers To Whatever Extent Accords With Their Personal Characteristics And Abilities.

-Albert Einstein

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The Satisfaction Of Physical

Albert Einstein

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The Satisfaction Of Physical Needs Is Indeed The Indispensable Pre-condition Of A Satisfactory Existence, But In Itself It Is Not Enough. In Order To Be Content, Men Must Also Have The Possibility Of Developing Their Intellectual And Artistic Powers To Whatever Extent Accords With Their Personal Characteristics And Abilities.

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With All My Heart I Believe That The World's Present System Of Sovereign Nations Can Only Lead To Barbarism, War And Inhumanity, And That Only World Law Can Assure Progress Towards A Civilized Peaceful Community.

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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.

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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.

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

You Believe In A God Who Plays Dice, I In Complete Law And Order.

Out Yonder There Is This Huge World, Which Exists Independently Of Us Human Beings And Which Stands Before Us Like A Great, Eternal Riddle, At Least Partially Accessible To Our Inspection And Thinking

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I Want To Know God's Thoughts.

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Falling In Love

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My Life Is A Simple Thing That Would Interest No One. It Is A Known Fact That I Was Born, And That Is All That Is Necessary.

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My Mind Is My Laboratory.

Imagination Is More Powerful Than Knowledge.

Albert Is A Very Poor Student. He Is Mentally Slow, Unsociable And Is Always Daydreaming. He Is Spoiling It For The Rest Of The Class. It Would Be In The Best Interests Of All If He Were Removed From School Immediately.

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Learn From Yesterday, Live For Today, Hope For Tomorrow. The Important Thing Is Not To Stop Questioning.

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The Finest Emotion Of Which We Are Capable Is The Mystic Emotion. Herein Lies The Germ Of All Art And All True Science. Anyone To Whom This Feeling Is Alien, Who Is No Longer Capable Of Wonderment And Lives In A State Of Fear Is A Dead Man.

I Have Become An Obstinate Heretic In The Eyes Of My Colleagues. Momentary Success Carries More Power Of Conviction Than Reflections Upon Principles.

We Cannot Solve Our Problems With The Same Thinking We Used When We Created Them.

But Love Brings Much Happiness - Much More So Than Pining Brings Pain.

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 What Is Seen And Experienced Is Portrayed In The Language Of Logic, Then It Is Science. If It Is Communicated Through Forms Whose Connections Are Not Accessible To The Conscious Mind But Are Recognized Intuitively, Then It Is Art.

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It Was, Of Course, A Lie What You Read About My Religious Convictions, A Lie Which Is Being Systematically Repeated. I Do Not Believe In A Personal God And I Have Never Denied This But Have Expressed It Clearly. If Something Is In Me Which Can Be Called Religious Then It Is The Unbounded Admiration For The Structure Of The World So Far As Our Science Can Reveal It.

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Common Sense Is The Collection Of Prejudices Acquired By Age Eighteen.

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

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.

My Relationship To The Jewish People Has Become My Strongest Human Bond, Ever Since I Became Fully Aware Of Our Precarious Situation Among The Nations Of The World.

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.

Intellectual Growth Should Commence At Birth And Cease Only At Death.

Joy And Amazement Of The Beauty And Grandeur Of This World Of Which Man Can Just Form A Faint Notion.

Happiness, As A Pursuit, Is Suitable Only For Pigs.

People Like You And I, Though Mortal Of Course Like Everyone Else, Do Not Grow Old No Matter How Long We Live.

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.

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.

A Bartender Is Just A Pharmacist With A Limited Inventory.

A Man's Ethical Behaviour 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.

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

Children Don’t Heed The Life Experiences Of Their Parents, And Nations Ignore History. Bad Lessons Always Have To Be Learned Anew.

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Was Wirklich Zählt, Ist Intuition

Creating A New Theory Is Not Like Destroying An Old Barn And Erecting A Skyscraper In Its Place. It Is Rather Like Climbing A Mountain And Gaining New And Wider Views.

Every Age Has Its Beautiful Moments.

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!

If At First The Idea Is Not Absurd, Then There Is No Hope For It.

Imagination Is The Highest Form Of Research.

Warfare Cannot Be Humanized.

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.

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

They Come Into Being Not Through Demonstration But Through Revelation, Through The Medium Of Powerful Personalities.

The Intuitive Mind Is A Sacred Gift And The Rational Mind Is A Faithful Servant. We Have Created A Society That Honors The Servant And Has Forgotten The Gift. We Will Not Solve The Problems Of The World From The Same Level Of Thinking We Were At When We Created Them. More Than Anything Else, This New Century Demands New Thinking: We Must Change Our Materially Based Analyses Of The World Around Us To Include Broader, More Multidimensional Perspectives.

Faithful Servants

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.

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

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.

The More I Learn, The More I Realize I Don't Know.

It Is An Outcome Of Faith That Nature-as She Is Perceptible To Our Five Senses-takes The Character Of Such A Well Formulated Puzzle.

I Want To Know How God Created This World. I Am Not Interested In This Or That Phenomenon, In The Spectrum Of This Or That Element. I Want To Know God's Thoughts, The Rest Are Details.

People Will Not Disarm Step By Step; They Will Disarm At One Blow Or Not At All.

Toreador Pants Make Your Feet Look Big Too

All That Is Valuable In Human Society Depends Upon The Opportunity For Development Accorded The Individual.

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

The Future Is Not A Gift-it Is An Achievement.

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

My Position Concerning God Is That Of An Agnostic.

Reward And Punishment

You Cannot Beat A Roulette Table Unless You Steal Money From It.

Work Is The Only Thing That Gives Substance To Life.

Mere Unbelief In A Personal God Is No Philosophy At All.

The Goal Of Pacifism Is Possible Only Though A Supranational Organization. To Stand Unconditionally For This Cause Is The Criterion Of True Pacifism.

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

The Intellect Has Little To Do On The Road To Discovery. There Comes A Leap In Consciousness, Call It Intuition Or What You Will, The Solution Comes To You And You Don't Know How Or Why.

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

It Is Entirely Possible That Behind The Perception Of Our Senses, Worlds Are Hidden Of Which We Are Unaware.

The World Is A Dangerous Place To Live

Dangerous World

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

I Have Survived Two Wars, Two Wives And Hitler.

Physics Is An Attempt Conceptually To Grasp Reality As Something That Is Considered To Be Independent Of Its Being Observed. In This Sense One Speaks Of Physical Reality.

The Thing Is, Not To Stop Questioning.

The Attempt To Combine Wisdom And Power Has Only Rarely Been Successful And Then Only For A Short While.

A Tyranny Based On ... Deception And Maintained By Terror Must Inevitably Perish From The Poison It Generates Within Itself.

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.

Innovation Is Not The Product Of Logical Thought, Even Though The Final Product Is Tied To A Logical Structure.

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

The Measure Of Intelligence Is The Ability To Change.

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.

The Great Need To Grasp Principles Had Caused Me To Spend Most Of My Time On Fruitless Persuits.

It Is Impossible To Solve Significant Problems Using The Same Knowledge That Created Them.

My Scientific Work Is Motivated By An Irresistible Longing To Understand The Secrets Of Nature Not By Other Feelings.

There Are Moments When One Feels Free From One's Own Identification With Human Limitations And Inadequacies. At Such Moments One Imagines That One Stands On Some Spot Of A Small Planet, Gazing In Amazement At The Cold Yet Profoundly Moving Beauty Of The Eternal, The Unfathomable; Life And Death Flow Into One, And There Is Neither Evolution Nor Destiny; Only Being.

Hail To The Man Who Went Through Life Always Helping Others, Knowing No Fear, And To Whom Aggressiveness And Resentment Are Alien. Such Is The Stuff Of Which The Great Moral Leaders Are Made.

To Raise New Questions, New Possibilities, To Regard Old Problems From A New Angle, Requires Creative Imagination And Marks Real Advance In Science.

The Universe Is A Friendly Place.

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.

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The Definition Of Genius Is Taking The Complex And Making It Simple.

The Physicist's Greatest Tool Is His Wastebasket.

Be A Loner. That Gives You Time To Wonder.

No Scientist Thinks In Formulae.

The Special Theory Of Relativity Owes Its Origins To Maxwell's Equations Of The Electromagnetic Field.

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