Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Quotes

• Truth is what stands the test of experience.

• The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It's the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wander, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

• If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I’m a German, and Germany will say that I’m a jew.

• God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.

• So long as there are men there will be wars.

• It is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.

• Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

• Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

• Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the life- long attempt to acquire it.

• The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.

• It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer.

• He who joyfully marches 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 suffice.

• People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

• I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

• No one but a theorist believes his theory; everyone puts faith in a laboratory result but the experimenter himself.

• Do you remember how electrical currents and 'unseen waves' were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.

• It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

• Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.

• 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.

• It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.