Physicist · German · 1879 – 1955 · 184 quotes
Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
Albert Einstein
Physicist · German · 1879 – 1955
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
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.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
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.
A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
The only source of knowledge is experience.
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
Force always attracts men of low morality.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
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.
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.
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.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
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.
I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.
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.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
