Albert Einstein Quotes

1. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.
2. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
3. A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
4. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
5. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
6. A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
7. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
8. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
9. All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.
10. An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
11. Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
12. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction
13. Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
14. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
15. Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
16. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
17. As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
18. A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
19. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
20. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
21. A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his 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. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
22. Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.
23. 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.
24. Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
25. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
26. Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
27. Dancers are the athletes of God.
28. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
29. Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
30. Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
31. Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
32. Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
33. Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.
34. Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
35. Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
36. Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
37. Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations.
38. 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.
39. Force always attracts men of low morality.
40. God does not play dice. 
41. God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.
42. God always takes the simplest way.
43. Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
44. God is subtle but he is not malicious.
45. Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
46. God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
47. Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
48. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
49. 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 suffice.
50. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!
51. Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
52. I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
53. I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
54. I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
55. I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.
56. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
57. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
58. I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
59. I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
60. If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
61. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
62. I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
63. I have just got a new theory of eternity.
64. I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
65. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
66. I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
67. I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.
68. I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
69. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
70. If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.
71. If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
72. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
73. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
74. Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
75. In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
76. In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
77. Information is not knowledge.
78. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
79. Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
80. Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them. 
81. Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
82. It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
83. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
84. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
85. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
86. It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
87. It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
88. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
89. It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
90. 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.
91. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.
92. It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
93. I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
94. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
95. If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
96. In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
97. I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference!
98. Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.
99. Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
100. Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
101. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
102. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
103. LOVE: He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
104. My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
105. My mind is my laboratory.
106. Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
107. Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)
108. One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.
109. Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies Opportunity.
110. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
111. Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
112. One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
113. 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.
114. Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
115. Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
116. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
117. 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.
118. …one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
119. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
120. Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
121. People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
122. Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.
123. Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
124. Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
125. Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
126. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
127. Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
128. Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
129. Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
130. Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.
131. Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
132. Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
133. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
134. That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
135. The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
136. The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.
137. The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
138. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
139. The environment is everything that isn’t me.
140. The faster you go, the shorter you are.
141. The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
142. 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.
143. The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
144. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
145. The man of science is a poor philosopher.
146. The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
147. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
148. The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
149. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
150. The only source of knowledge is experience. 
151. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
152. The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
153. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
154. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
155. The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
156. The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
157. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
158. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
159. The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
160. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
161. The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
162. There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
163. There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
164. There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.
165. There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
166. Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
167. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
168. To the Master’s honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton’s ground.
169. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
170. True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
171. True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.
172. Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
173. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
174. The only real valuable thing is intuition.
175. The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
176. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
177. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
178. Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
179. The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
180. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
181. Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.
182. The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.
183. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
184. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
185. The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
186. The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
187. 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 in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
188. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
189. The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
190. Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
191. We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
192. We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
193. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
194. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
195. We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
196. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
197. When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
198. When the solution is simple, God is answering.
199. When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.
200. Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
201. Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
202. Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.
203. We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
204. We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.
205. 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.
206. Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
207. You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.
208. Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our 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.
209. 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.
210. You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.