Albert Einstein Quotes

Famous Albert Einstein quotes and links to material related to Albert Einstein.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater"

• My favourite Albert Einstein quote: "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

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

"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."

"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world."

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning."

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

Quotes from 'The World As I See It' by Albert Einstein

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart ... I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized... force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

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

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead... It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

The World As I See It,published in "Forum and Century," vol. 84, pp. 193-194 & Living Philosophers. (pp. 3-7) New York: Simon Schuster, 1931& Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, based ed. by Carl Seelig, New York: Bonzana Books, 1954 (pp. 8-11).