Einstein Quotes
I've been trying to track down a quote that I think Albert Einstein said. It was something like "Man muss ein bisschen something-or-other sein" - meaning you have to be a little mysterious sometimes. I haven't been able to find it - the double-s's being a special character in German doesn't help, perhaps - but I did find some other quotes from the great man which I rather like:-
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery every day. The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.
I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values.
I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.
It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service ... Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. 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.
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, and his eyes are dimmed.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.
While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor - not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules.
Some of the above quotes refer to religion, so it is probably worth emphasising that Einstein himself used to object strongly to either religious groups or atheist groups trying to hijack his views and present him as one of their own. He is probably best described as an agnostic with strong opinions about religion. In particular he was a believer in the principle of causality - determinism in effect - which meant that neither free will nor a personal interventionist God made any sense to him (nor, if it comes to that, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). I don’t agree with him, of course, but I guess Einstein would say that I have no choice about that.