Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Quotes

• Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.

• The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.

• Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form.

• Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.

• We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

• I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.

• Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

• Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

• He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.

• The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.

• The conscientious objector is a revoultionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.

• To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

• It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel".

• There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.

• After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest sceintists are always artists as well.

• Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.

• Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

• The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of Jewish tradition that make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

• If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.

• Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?