Albert Einstein Quotes

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

If you want to know the future, look at the past.

What I seek to accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and justice, at the risk of pleasing no one.

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.

We are all very ignorant. What happens is that not all ignore the same things.

Whatever your problems in math are, I assure mine are greater.

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.

A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.

Anonymity is no excuse for stupidity.

The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem to characterize our age. If we desire sincerely and passionately the safety, the welfare and the free development of the talents of all men, we shall not be in want of the means to approach such a state.

America is a democracy and has no Hitler, but I am afraid for her future; there are hard times ahead for the American people, troubles will be coming from within and without. America cannot smile away their Negro problem nor Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are cosmic laws.

The normal objective of my thought affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling.

E=mc2. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared

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.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

I take it to be true that pure thought can grasp the real, as the ancients had dreamed.

No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

Truth is what stands the test of experience.

It's not that I'm so smart.

Members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.

What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians?

Science has gone a long way toward helping man to free himself from the burden of hard labor; yet, science itself is not a liberator. It creates means, not goals. It is up to men to utilize those means to achieve reasonable goals.

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.

Everything that exists in your life, does so because of two things: something you did or something you didn't do.

I must seem like an ostrich who forever burries its head in the relativistic sands in order not to face the evil quanta.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

When a man, after long years of searching, chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding.

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.

Imagination is more valuable than information.

The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

Watch the stars, and from them learn.

I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.

We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. And those who have an interest in keeping the machinery of war going are a very powerful body; they will stop at nothing to make public opinion subservient to their murderous ends.

No scientist thinks in formulae.

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.

Why is it that no one understands me and everybody likes me

The scientist finds his reward in what Henri Poincare calls the joy of comprehension, and not in the possibility of application to which any discovery may lead.

Of what significance is one's existence, one is basically unaware. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? The bitter and the sweet come from outside. The hard from within, from one's own efforts. For the most part I do what my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn such respect and love for it.

As to science, we may well define it for our purpose as "methodical thinking directed toward finding regulative connections between our sensual experiences".

The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time.

Was wirklich zählt, ist Intuition

The same thinking and actions that created our problems cannot be used to solve them.

The most valuable thing a teacher can impart to children is not knowledge and understanding per se but a longing for knowledge and understanding, and an appreciation for intellectual values, whether they be artistic, scientific, or moral. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. Most teachers waste their time by asking questions that are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing.

I have no extraordinary ability. I'm simply an inquisitive individual.

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.

Artists and creative workers - people who have accomplished work worthwhile have had a very high sense of the way to do things. They haven't been contented with mediocrity. They haven't confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others do them, but always a little better. Few are those who see with their own eyesand feel with their own hearts.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift.

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think

The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own efforts.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

Do you really believe that the moon isn’t there when nobody looks?

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

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.

The most practical solution is a good theory.

Strange is our situation here upon earth.

For the most part, I do the thing which my own nature prompts me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it.