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.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
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?
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.
If tomorrow were never to come, it would not be worth living today.
The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.
I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
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.
Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots
Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren’t these the same questions as last year’s [physics] final exam?Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
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.
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
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.
A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.
Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
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.
It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
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.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
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 are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.
In scientific thinking are always present elements of poetry. Science and music requires a thought homogeneous.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
Einstein on time travel:People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Deux choses sont infinies : l’Univers et la bêtise humaine. Mais, en ce qui concerne l’Univers, je n’en ai pas encore acquis la certitude absolue.
Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.
Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.