"If I am right the Germans will..." - Quote by Albert Einstein
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.
More by Albert Einstein
“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
“Why do people speak of great men in terms of nationality? Great Germans, great Englishmen? Goethe always protested against being called a German poet. Great men are simply men and are not to be considered from the point of view of nationality, nor should the environment in which they were brought up be taken into account.”
More on Identity
“The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don't realize that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.”
“I don't think that the objective of the American negro is white middle-class values because what are white middle-class values?”
“You [future first ladies] will feel that you are no longer clothing yourself, you are dressing a public monument.”
More on Perception
“All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.”
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be represented as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
“I never thought that others would take my theories so much more seriously than I did.”