"Gravitation can not be held resposible for people falling in love"
"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and
wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and
observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science"
"Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master's honor all
must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing
Newton's ground."
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."
When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that
he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With
sticks and stones!
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an
hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a
minute. THAT'S relativity."
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is
blind.
God does not play dice with the universe.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival
of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet"
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure about the former.
"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that
created them."
Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second
world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played
a German piece of music and a woman in the audience excaimed: "How
wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded:
"Madam,
people are all the same."
This is a story I heard as a freshman at the University of Utah when
Dr. Henry Eyring was still teaching chemistry there. Many years
before he and Dr. Einstein were colleagues. As they walked together
they noted an unusual plant growing along a garden walk. Dr. Eyring
asked Dr. Einstein if he knew what the plant was. Einstein did not,
and together they consulted a gardner. The gardner indicated the
plant was green beans and forever afterwards Eyring said Einstein
didn't know beans
the story has ever been published...
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often
think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in
terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
Imagination encircles the world.
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 scientists do,
each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its
construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in
this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow
whirlpool of personal experience.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It
is the source of all true art and science.
"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 fully sduffice. This disgrace
to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at
command, senceless brutality, deplorable loce-of-country stance,
how violently i hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I
would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action!
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing
but an act of murder."
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the
joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of
comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics
built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
Strange is our Situation Here Upon Earth
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained
through understanding.
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.