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What Artistic And Scientific Experience Have In Common - 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. If What Is Seen And Experienced Is Portrayed In The Language Of Logic, We Are Engaged In Science. If It Is Communicated Through Forms Whose Connections Are Not Accessible To The Conscious Mind But Are Recognized Intuitively As Meaninful, Then We Are Engaged In Art. Common To Both Is The Loving Devotion To That Which Transcends Personal Concerns And Volition.

-Albert Einstein

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What Artistic And Scientific

Albert Einstein

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What Artistic And Scientific Experience Have In Common - 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. If What Is Seen And Experienced Is Portrayed In The Language Of Logic, We Are Engaged In Science. If It Is Communicated Through Forms Whose Connections Are Not Accessible To The Conscious Mind But Are Recognized Intuitively As Meaninful, Then We Are Engaged In Art. Common To Both Is The Loving Devotion To That Which Transcends Personal Concerns And Volition.

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With Me Every Peep Becomes A Trumpet Solo.

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.

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.

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

... Knowledge Must Continually Be Renewed By Ceaseless Effort, If It Is Not To Be Lost. It Resembles A Statue Of Marble Which Stands In The Desert And Is Continually Threatened With Burial By The Shifting Sand. The Hands Of Service Must Ever Be At Work, In Order That The Marble Continue To Lastingly Shine In The Sun. To These Serving Hands Mine Shall Also Belong.

Considered Logically This Concept Is Not Identical With The Totality Of Sense Impressions Referred To; But It Is An Arbitrary Creation Of The Human (or Animal) Mind.

The History Of Scientific And Technical Discovery Teaches Us That The Human Race Is Poor In Independent And Creative Imagination.

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.

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

There Is One Ray Of Hope. It Seems To Me That Today The Responsible Leaders Of The Several Peoples Have, In The Main, The Honest Will To Abolish War.

Between The Difficulties, One Hides The Opportunity

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

If You Can't Explain It Simply, You Don't Understand It Well Enough.

So Would A Being, Endowed With Higher Insight And More Perfect Intelligence, Watching Man And His Doings, Smile About Man's Illusion That He Was Acting According To His Own Free Will.

As Long As There Are Sovereign Nations Possessing Great Power, War Is Inevitable.

Nothing Happens Until Something Moves. When Something Vibrates, The Electrons Of The Entire Universe Resonate With It. Everything Is Connected.

It Followed From The Special Theory Of Relativity That Mass And Energy Are Both But Different Manifestations Of The Same Thing - A Somewhat Unfamiliar Conception For The Average Mind. Furthermore, The Equation E = Mc², In Which Energy Is Put Equal To Mass, Multiplied By The Square Of The Velocity Of Light, Showed That Very Small Amounts Of Mass May Be Converted Into A Very Large Amount Of Energy And Vice Versa.

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.

[max Planck] Was One Of The Finest People I Have Ever Known... But He Really Didn't Understand Physics, [because] During The Eclipse Of 1919 He Stayed Up All Night To See If It Would Confirm The Bending Of Light By The Gravitational Field. If He Had Really Understood [general Relativity], He Would Have Gone To Bed The Way I Did

Humankind's Desire For Peace Can Be Realized Only By The Creation Of A World Government.

World Government

To Take Those Fools In Clerical Garb Seriously Is To Show Them Too Much Honor.

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

In Their Struggle For The Ethical Good, Teachers Of Religion Must Have The Stature To Give Up The Doctrine Of A Personal God, That Is, Give Up That Source Of Fear And Hope Which In The Past Placed Such Vast Power In The Hands Of Priests. In Their Labors They Will Have To Avail Themselves Of Those Forces Which Are Capable Of Cultivating The Good, The True, And The Beautiful In Humanity Itself. This Is, To Be Sure, A More Difficult But An Incomparably More Worthy Task.

There Is Nothing Known As "perfect". Its Only Those Imperfections Which We Choose Not To See!!

There Is No Scientific Antidote, Only Education. You've Got To Change The Way People Think. I Am Not Interested In Disarmament Talks Between Nations . . . What I Want To Do Is To Disarm The Mind. After That, Everything Else Will Automatically Follow. The Ultimate Weapon For Such Mental Disarmament Is International Education.

A Theory Is The More Impressive The Greater The Simplicity Of Its Premises Is, The More Different Kinds Of Things It Relates, And The More Extended Is Its Area Of Applicability. Therefore The Deep Impression Which Classical Thermodynamics Made Upon Me. It Is The Only Physical Theory Of Universal Content Concerning Which I Am Convinced That Within The Framework Of The Applicability Of Its Basic Concepts, It Will Never Be Overthrown.

All Our Thinking Is Of This Nature, A Free Play With Concepts.

You Might As Well Not Be Alive If You're Not In Awe Of God.

Nothing Is More Destructive Of Respect For The Government And The Law Of The Land Than Passing Laws Which Cannot Be Enforced.

Only A Life Lived For Others Is A Life Worth While . I Have No Special Gift. I Am Only Passionately Curious . I Want To Know God's Thoughts... All The Rest Are Details. Joy In Looking And Comprehending Is Nature's Most Beautiful Gift. It's Not That I'm So Smart , It's Just That I Stay With Problems Longer.

Solutions To Tough Problems Should Be Made As Simple As Possible - And No Simpler.

The Value Of Achievement Lies In The Achieving.

One Must Shy Away From Questionable Undertakings, Even When They Bear A High-sounding Name.

If You Want Your Children To Be Smart, Tell Them Stories. If You Want Them To Be Really Smart, Tell Them More Stories. If You Want Your Children To Be Brilliant, Tell Them Even More Stories.

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.

To Me It Is Enough To Wonder At The Secrets

Don't Do Anything That Goes Against Your Conscience, Even If Your Country Says So.

It Is Just As Important To Make Knowledge Live And Keep It Alive As To Solve Specific Problems.

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

Try First To Be A Man Of Value; Success Will Follow.

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

Nationalism Is The Measels Of Mankind.

I Have Made No Secret, Either Privately Or Publicly, Of Any Sense Of Outrage Over Officially Enforced Military And War Service. I Regard It As A Duty Of Conscience To Fight Against Such Barbarous Enslavement Of The Individual With Every Means Available.

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.

I Have Tried 99 Times And Have Failed, But On The 100th Time Came Success.

Scientists Were Rated As Great Heretics By The Church, But They Were Truly Religious Men Because Of Their Faith In The Orderliness Of The Universe.

The Moon Does Not Simply Disappear When We Are Not Looking At It.

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.

Hell! There Ain't No Rules Around Here! We Are Tryin' To Accomplish Somep'n!

Be A Loner. That Gives You Time To Wonder, To Search For The Truth. Have Holy Curiosity. Make Your Life Worth Living.

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.

It Is Characteristic Of The Military Mentality That Non-human Factors ... Are Held Essential, While The Human Being, His Desires And Thoughts-in Short, The Psychological Factors-are Considered As Unimportant And Secondary.

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

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.

The Genius Is In Making The Complex Simple.

Each Act Is An Island In Time, To Be Judged On Its Own.

The Fanatical Atheists Are Like Slaves Who Are Still Feeling The Weight Of Their Chains Which They Have Thrown Off After Hard Struggle. They Are Creatures Who—in Their Grudge Against Traditional Religion As The "opium Of The Masses"—cannot Hear The Music Of The Spheres.

If There Is Any Religion That Could Respond To The Needs Of Modern Science, It Would Be Buddhism.

I Have Always Disliked The Fierce Competitive Spirit Embodied In That Highly Intellectual Game.

Only Six Men In The World Know About Relativity. I Am Not One Of Them. When I Ask Them To Explain, They Confused Me.

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

How Many People Are Trapped In Their Everyday Habits: Part Numb, Part Frightened, Part Indifferent? To Have A Better Life We Must Keep Choosing How We Are Living.

Experience Alone Can Decide On Truth.

A Permanent Peace Cannot Be Prepared By Threats But Only By The Honest Attempt To Create A Mutual Trust. However Strong National Armaments May Be, They Do Not Create Military Security For Any Nation Nor Do They Guarantee The Maintenance Of Peace.

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

What You Can't Imagine, You Can't Discover.

Everything What's Inspiring Has Been Created By One Who Could Work In Freedom

Life Is A Journey

Everybody Felt His Superiority, But Nobody Felt Oppressed By It. Though He Had No Illusions About People And Human Affairs, He Was Full Of Kindness Toward Everybody And Everything. Never Did He Give The Impression Of Domineering, Always Of Serving And Helping. He Was Extremely Conscientious, Without Allowing Anything To Assume Undue Importance; A Subtle Humor Guarded Him, Which Was Reflected In His Eyes And In His Smile.

The Most Powerful Force In The World Is Compound Interest.

Only A Very Dull Man Spells A Word The Same Way Twice.

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

Making Mistakes

I Cannot Write In English, Because Of The Treacherous Spelling. When I Am Reading, I Only Hear It And Am Unable To Remember What The Written Word Looks Like.

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

One Must Take What Nature Gives As One Finds It.

The Minority, The Ruling Class At Present, Has The Schools And Press, Usually The Church As Well, Under Its Thumb. This Enables It To Organize And Sway The Emotions Of The Masses, And Make Its Tool Of Them.

Einstein Was Attending A Music Salon In Germany Before The Second World War, With The Violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese Women Played A German Piece Of Music And A Woman In The Audience Exclaimed: "how Wonderful! It Sounds So German!" Einstein Responded: "madam, People Are All The Same."

It Occurred To Me By Intuition, And Music Was The Driving Force Behind That Intuition. My Discovery Was The Result Of Musical Perception.

Applying The Axioms Of Physical Science To Human Life Has Something Reprehensible To It.

Physical Science

My Interest In Science Was Always Essentially Limited To The Study Of Principles.... That I Have Published So Little Is Due To This Same Circumstance, As The Great Need To Grasp Principles Has Caused Me To Spend Most Of My Time On Fruitless Pursuits.

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

The Most Incomprehensible Thing About The World Is That It Is Comprehensible.

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

Opinions About Obviousness Are To A Certain Extent A Function Of Time.

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

The Man Who Regards His Own Life And That Of His Fellow-creatures As Meaningless Is Not Merely Unfortunate But Almost Disqualified For Life.

Imagination Is Vastly More Important Than Intelligence.

Everyone Likes Me, Yet Nobody Understands Me.

Nobody Understands Me

Everything That Exists In Your Life, Does So Because Of Two Things: Something You Did Or Something You Didn't Do.

I Received Your Letter Of June 10th. I Have Never Talked To A Jesuit Priest In My Life And I Am Astonished By The Audacity To Tell Such Lies About Me. From The Viewpoint Of A Jesuit Priest I Am, Of Course, And Have Always Been An Atheist.

The Facts, Although Interesting, Are Irrelevant.

Science Not Only Purifies The Religious Impulse Of The Dross Of Its Anthropomorphism But Also Contributes To A Religious Spiritualization Of Our Understanding Of Life.

Anthropomorphism

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

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).

It Is The Theory That Decides What Can Be Observed.

I Never Teach My Pupils, I Only Attempt To Provide The Conditions In Which They Can Learn.

Solitude Is Painful When One Is Young, But Delightful When One Is More Mature.

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

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.

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.

Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge. For Knowledge Is Limited To All We Now Know And Understand, While Imagination Embraces The Entire World, And All There Ever Will Be To Know And Understand.

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.

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

Keeping Your Mouth Shut

Many Of The Things You Can Count, Don't Count. Many Of The Things You Can't Count, Really Count.

What Physics Looks For: The Simplest Possible System Of Thought Which Will Bind Together The Observed Facts.

The Right To Search For Truth Implies Also A Duty.

Search For Truth

Is There Not A Certain Satisfaction In The Fact That Natural Limits Are Set To The Life Of The Individual, So That At The Conclusion It May Appear As A Work Of Art?

I Live My Daydreams In Music.

Inspirational Music

Man Can Find Meaning In Life Only Through Devoting Himself To Society.

Meaning Of Life

I Am Strongly Drawn To A Frugal Life And Am Often Oppressively Aware That I Am Engrossing An Undue Amount Of The Labor Of My Fellow Men.

If I Had My Life To Live Over Again, I Would Elect To Be A Trader Of Goods Rather Than A Student Of Science. I Think Barter Is A Noble Thing.

One Lives One's Life Under Constant Tension, Until It's Time To Go For Good

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

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.

Dancers Are The Athletes Of God.

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

Racism Is America's Greatest Disease, Racism Is A Disease Of The White Man.

The Grand Aim Of All Science Is To Cover The Greatest Number Of Empirical Facts By Logical Deduction From The Smallest Number Of Hypotheses Or Axioms.

There Two Things That Are Infinite, Human Stupidity And The Universe, I Don't Know About The Universe

Although I Am A Typical Loner In My Daily Life, My Awareness Of Belonging To The Invisible Community Of Those Who Strive For Truth, Beauty, And Justice Has Prevented Me From Feelings Of Isolation.

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.

Every One Who Is Seriously Involved In The Pursuit Of Science Becomes Convinced That A Spirit Is Manifest In The Laws Of The Universe-a Spirit Vastly Superior To That Of Man, And One In The Face Of Which We With Our Modest Powers Must Feel Humble.

We Owe A Lot To The Indians, Who Taught Us How To Count, Without Which No Worthwhile Scientific Discovery Could Have Been Made.

I Learned Many Years Ago Never To Waste Time Trying To Convince My Colleagues.

(reply On What Constitutes Scientific Proof:)"the Question Is Much Too Difficult For Me.

The War Is Won, But The Peace Is Not.

The Creative Principle [of Science] Resides In Mathematics.

The Most Important Tool Of The Theoretical Physicist Is His Wastebasket.

Don't Listen To The Person Who Has The Answers; Listen To The Person Who Has The Questions.

It Should Be Possible To Explain The Laws Of Physics To A Barmaid.

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

Thinking Like We (always) Have Is What Got Us Where We Are. It Is Not Going To Get Us Where We Are Going.

All Means Prove But Blunt Instruments, If They Have Not Behind Them A Living Spirit.

You Can Never Solve A Problem On The Level On Which It Was Created.

It Is Really A Puzzle What Drives One To Take One's Work So Devilishly Seriously.

Outer Changes Always Begin With An Inner Change Of Attitude.

I Believe In Intuitions And Inspirations...i Sometimes Feel That I Am Right. I Do Not Know That I Am.

There Are Six-million Shots In The Game Of Pool.

Private Capitalists Inevitably Control, Directly Or Indirectly, The Main Sources Of Information. It Is Thus Extremely Difficult, And Indeed In Most Cases Quite Impossible, For The Individual Citizen To Come To Objective Conclusions And To Make Intelligent Use Of His Political Rights.

There Is Not The Slightest Indication That Nuclear Energy Will Ever Be Obtainable. It Would Mean That The Atom Would Have To Be Shattered At Will.

Anti-semitism Is Nothing But The Antagonistic Attitude Produced In The Non-jew By The Jewish Group. This Is A Normal Social Reaction. The Jewish Group Has Thrived On Oppression And On The Antagonism It Has Forever Met In The World... The Root Cause Is Their Use Of Enemies They Create In Order To Keep Solidarity.

I Love To Travel, But Hate To Arrive.

It Is Not A Lack Of Real Affection That Scares Me Away Again And Again From Marriage. Is It A Fear Of The Comfortable Life, Of Nice Furniture, Of Dishonor That I Burden Myself With, Or Even The Fear Of Becoming A Contented Bourgeois.

If You Took Half Of Something And Continued To Take Half Of That Half And So On, You Would Never Reach An End.

Before God We Are All Equally Wise - And Equally Foolish.

I Believe In Standardizing Automobiles, Not Human Beings.

The Theoretical Idea ... Does Not Arise Apart From And Independent Of Experience; Nor Can It Be Derived From Experience By A Purely Logical Procedure. It Is Produced By A Creative Act. Once A Theoretical Idea Has Been Acquired, One Does Well To Hold Fast To It Until It Leads To An Untenable Conclusion.

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.

Playfullness Is The Essential Feature Of Productive Thought.

The History Of Scientific And Technical Discovery Teaches Us That The Human Race Is Poor In Independent And Creative Imagination. Even When The External And Scientific Requirements For The Birth Of An Idea Have Long Been There, It Generally Needs An External Stimulus To Make It Actually Happen; Man Has, So To Speak, To Stumble Right Up Against The Thing Before The Idea Comes.

The One Who Walks Alone, Is Likely To Find Himself In Places No One Has Ever Been.

Being Different

Following The Crowd

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

Eternity Of Life

If There Is A God

Imagination Is Everything. It Is The Preview Of Life's Coming Attractions. Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge. Never Give Up On What You Really Want To Do. The Person With Big Dreams Is More Powerful Than One With All The Facts.

An Autocratic System Of Coercion, In My Opinion, Soon Degenerates. For Force Always Attracts Men Of Low Morality, And I Believe It To Be An Invariable Rule That Tyrants Of Genius Are Succeeded By Scoundrels. For This Reason I Have Always Been Passionately Opposed To Systems Such As We See In Italy And Russia To-day.

I Believe That The First Step In The Setting Of A Real External World Is The Formation Of The Concept Of Bodily Objects And Of Bodily Objects Of Various Kinds.

The Thing Is, Not To Stop Questioning.

I Cannot Then Believe In This Concept Of An Anthropomorphic God Who Has The Powers Of Interfering With These Natural Laws. As I Said Before, The Most Beautiful And Most Profound Religious Emotion That We Can Experience Is The Sensation Of The Mystical. And This Mysticality Is The Power Of All True Science.

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

I Have Reached An Age Where If Someone Tells Me To Wear Socks, I Dont Have To

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

The Best That Gauss Has Given Us Was Likewise An Exclusive Production. If He Had Not Created His Geometry Of Surfaces, Which Served Riemann As A Basis, It Is Scarcely Conceivable That Anyone Else Would Have Discovered It. I Do Not Hesitate To Confess That To A Certain Extent A Similar Pleasure May Be Found By Absorbing Ourselves In Questions Of Pure Geometry.

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

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

The Essentials Of Being A Person Of My Type Lies Precisely In What They Think And How They Think, Not In What They Do. Your Thoughts Shape You.

Nuclear Power Is One Hell Of A Way To Boil Water

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.

It Is Very Difficult To Explain This Feeling To Anyone Who Is Entirely Without It, Especially As There Is No Anthropomorphic Conception Of God Corresponding To It. The Individual Feels The Nothingness Of Human Desires And Aims And The Sublimity And Marvelous Order Which Reveal Themselves Both In Nature And In The World Of Though. He Looks Upon Individual Existence As A Sort Of Prison And Wants To Experience The Universe As A Single Significant Whole.

It Is Easy To Say Something New, If All Senses One Will Eschew. But Hardly Ever Is Found, That The New Is Also Sound.

The Mathematician Knows Some Things, No Doubt, But Not Those Things One Usually Wants To Get From Him.

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

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.

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.

Yes, We Now Have To Divide Up Our Time Like That, Between Politics And Our Equations. But To Me Our Equations Are Far More Important, For Politics Are Only A Matter Of Present Concern. A Mathematical Equation Stands Forever.

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.

Personally, I Experience The Greatest Degree Of Pleasure In Having Contact With Works Of Art. They Furnish Me With Happy Feelings Of An Intensity That I Cannot Derive From Other Sources.

God Is Clever, But Not Dishonest.

Imagination Encircles The World.

Concern For Man Himself Must Always Constitute The Chief Objective Of All Technological Effort

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

Belief In An External World Independent Of The Perceiving Subject Is The Basis Of All Natural Science.

It Is Strange To Be Known So Universally And Yet To Be So Lonely.

The Normal Objective Of My Thought Affords No Insight Into The Dark Places Of Human Will And Feeling.

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.

A Knowledge Of The Existence Of Something We Cannot Penetrate, Of The Manifestations Of The Profoundest Reason And The Most Radiant Beauty - It Is This Knowledge And This Emotion That Constitute The Truly Religious Attitude; In This Sense, And In This Alone, I Am A Deeply Religious Man.

The Bitter And The Sweet Come From The Outside, The Hard From Within, From One's Own Efforts.

Mankind Invented The Atomic Bomb, But No Mouse Would Ever Construct A Mousetrap.

Politics Is A Pendulum Whose Swings Between Anarchy And Tyranny Are Fueled By Perennially Rejuvenated Illusions.

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

The Important Thing Is To Never Stop Questioning. Never Lose A Holy Curiosity.

In The Midst Of Difficulty Lies Opportunity.

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

The Most Important Question A Person Can Ask Is, "is The Universe A Friendly Place?

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

The Dog Is Very Smart. He Feels Sorry For Me Because I Receive So Much Mail; That's Why He Tries To Bite The Mailman.

I Cannot Imagine A God Who Rewards And Punishes The Objects Of His Creation And Is But A Reflection Of Human Frailty.

We Experience Ourselves Our Thoughts And Feelings As Something Separate From The Rest. A Kind Of Optical Delusion Of Consciousness. This Delusion Is A Kind Of Prison For Us, Restricting Us To Our Personal Desires And To Affection For A Few Persons Nearest To Us.

Here's A Challenge: Study A Complicated Topic In Such Detail That Anyone Interested Can Nod Their Head And Understand As You Explain Specific Concepts Within The Topic.

Falling In Love Is Not At All The Most Stupid Thing That People Do - But Gravitation Cannot Be Held Responsible For It.

Assumptions Are Made And Most Assumptions Are Wrong.

We Must Remember That We Do Not Observe Nature As It Actually Exists, But Nature Exposed To Our Methods Of Perception. The Theories Determine What We Can Or Cannot Observe...reality Is An Illusion, Albeit A Persistent One.

One Can't Teach A Cat Not To Catch Birds

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