No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Gandhi, the greatest political genius of our time, has pointed the way. He was shown of what sacrifices people are capable once they have found the right way. His work for the liberation of India is a living testimony to the fact that a will governed by firm conviction is stronger than a seemingly invincible material power.
I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
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.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
Try not to become a man of success, but rather become a man of value.
The laws of gravity cannot be held responcible for people falling in love.
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy.
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.
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
We’re all a genius, but If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man’s guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
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.
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.