in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience" (Einstein, Principles of Research, Address delivered at a celebration of Max Planck's sixtieth birthday, 1918).
"One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts" (Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity, 1920, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, pp.12).
"How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?" (Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity, 1920, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, pp.12).
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality" (Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity, 1920, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, pp.12).
"Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice" (Einstein, The Born-Einstein Letters, 1926 Macmillan, 2005).
"I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind" (Einstein, Response to the telegram "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words," from New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, 1929).
"To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself" (Einstein, Aphorism for a friend, 1930).
"Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development" (Einstein, Religion and Science, New York Times, 9th November 1930).
"there is a third stage of religious experience…even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it...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" (Einstein, Religion and Science, New York Times, 9th November 1930).
"How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it" (Einstein, Religion and Science, New York Times, 9th November 1930).
"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 hopes of reward after death" (Einstein, Religion and Science, New York Times, 9th November 1930).
"I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue…Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people" (Einstein, Religion and Science, New York Times, 9th November 1930).
"I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research" (Einstein, Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms, Covici-Friede, 1931).
"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" (Einstein, Interview with poet George Sylvester Viereck, 1931).
The Star Garden
"Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they might come to be stamped as 'necessities of thought,' 'a priori givens,' etc. The path of scientific progress is often made impassable for a long time by such errors" (Einstein, Obituary for physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach, Physikalische Zeitschrift, Vol. 17, 1916).
"The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart" (Einstein, Principles of Research, Address delivered at a celebration of Max Planck's sixtieth birthday, 1918).
"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life,
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities" (Einstein, Mein Weltbild AKA The World As I See It, 1931, Book Tree, 2007, pp.3).
"The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling" (Einstein, Mein Weltbild AKA The World As I See It, 1931, Book Tree, 2007, pp.4).
"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — 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" (Einstein, Mein Weltbild AKA The World As I See It, 1931, Book Tree, 2007, pp.5).
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls" (Einstein, Mein Weltbild AKA The World As I See It, 1931, Book Tree, 2007, pp.5).
"Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature" (Einstein, Mein Weltbild AKA The World As I See It, 1931, Book Tree, 2007, pp.5).
"Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore" (Einstein, My Credo, speech to the German League of Human Rights, 1932).
"I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper" (Einstein, My Credo, speech to the German League of Human Rights, 1932).
"My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as did my aversion to any obligation and dependence I do not regard as absolutely necessary. I always have a high regard for the individual and have an insuperable distaste for violence and clubmanship. All these motives made me into a passionate pacifist and anti-militarist. I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult" (Einstein, My Credo, speech to the German League of Human Rights, 1932).
"Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated" (Einstein, My Credo, speech to the German League of Human Rights, 1932).
"Read no newspapers, try to find a few friends who think as you do, read the wonderful writers of earlier times, Kant, Goethe, Lessing, and the classics of other lands, and enjoy the natural beauties of Munich's surroundings. Make believe all the time that you are living, so to speak, on Mars among alien creatures and blot out any deeper interest in the actions of those creatures. Make friends with a few animals. Then you will become a cheerful man once more and nothing will be able to trouble you. Bear in mind that those who are finer and nobler are always alone — and necessarily so — and that because of this they can enjoy the purity of their own atmosphere. I shake your hand in heartfelt comradeship, E." (Einstein, Response to a letter from an unemployed professional musician, 1933).
"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature" (Einstein, Obituary for Emmy Noether, The New York Times, 5th May 1935).
"One may say 'the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility'" (Einstein, Physics and Reality, Piccard, J. (trans.), 1936).
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom…there was never any doubt as to the striving for culture. No one doubted the sacredness of the goal. It was the approach that was disputed" (Einstein, Moral Decay, 1937 reprinted in Out of My Later Years, 1950).
"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth" (Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 1938, CUP Archive, 1971, pp.31).
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly" (Einstein, Letter to philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen, 1940).
"science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith" (Einstein, Science and Religion, Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., 1941).
"Science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualisation of our understanding of life" (Einstein, Science and Religion, Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., 1941).
"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" (Einstein, Science and Religion, Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., 1941).
"So many people today - and even professional scientists - 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" (Einstein, Letter to physicist Robert A. Thorton, 1944).
"For the most part we humans live with the false impression of security and a feeling of being at home in a seemingly familiar and trustworthy physical and human environment. But when the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we realise that we are like shipwrecked people trying to keep their balance on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whither they are drifting. But once we fully accept this, life becomes easier and there is no longer any disappointment" (Einstein, Letter to a doctor and his wife who had lost a child or grandchild, they had been active in helping refugees from Nazi Germany, 1945).
"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity" (Einstein, Out of My Later Years, 1950, pp.5).
"A human being is a part of the 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. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security" (Einstein, 1950, printed in The New York Times, 29 March 1972).
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious" (Einstein, Letter to biographer Carl Seelig, 1952).
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen" (Einstein, quoted in Temple Bell, E., Mathematics, Queen and Servant of the Sciences, 1952).
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this" (Einstein, Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, 1954).
"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion" (Einstein, Letter to the family of his lifelong friend Michele Besso, after learning of his death, 1955).
"The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery every day. The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity" (Einstein, Statement to William Miller quoted in LIFE magazine, 2nd May 1955).
"Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value" (Einstein, LIFE magazine, 2nd May 1955).
"An equation is something for eternity" (Einstein, quoted in Helle Zeit, Dunkle Zeit: In Memoriam Albert Einstein, 1956).