586 Intelligent Quotes by Albert Einstein

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

God always takes the simplest way.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

Creative energy is more critical than learning.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.

Conscious man, to be sure, has at all times been keenly aware that life is an adventure, that life must, forever, be wrested from death.

Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.

It is my inner conviction that the development of science seeks in the main to satisfy the longing for pure knowledge.

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

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

Love is a better master than duty.

The legs are the wheels of creativity.

The important things are always simple.

I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought.

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.

Time is an illusion.

What I seek to accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and justice, at the risk of pleasing no one.

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

Nature rarely surrenders one of her magnificent secrets.

Look into nature, and then you will understand it better.

The most beautiful gift of nature is that it gives one pleasure to look around and try to comprehend what we see.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

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

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

In art, and in the higher ranges of science, there is a feeling of harmony which underlies all endeavor. There is no true greatness in art or science without that sense of harmony.

Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.

Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore.

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

A true genius admits that he or she knows nothing.

Failure is success in progress.

When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

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

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

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

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

The framing of a problem is often far more essential than its solution.

Each possession I own is but a stone around my neck.

One definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Out of complexity, find simplicity.

People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.

The most important tool of the theoretical physicist is his wastebasket.

The payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Failing isn't bad when you learn what not to do.

That man is here for the sake of other men -- above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.

Only a life lived for others is a life worth living.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

A model should be as simple as it can be but no simpler.

The really valuable method of thought to arrive at a logically coherent system is intuition.

The principal art of the teacher is to awaken the joy in creation and knowledge.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless, is not merely unfortunate, but almost disqualified for life.

I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.

There are two things that are infinite, the universe and man's stupidity and I am not sure about the universe.

The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd.

Learn from Yesterday, live for Today, hope for Tomorrow.

The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man.

For us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.

The future is not a gift, it is an achievement.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.

This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.

Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind. What then is an empty desk a sign of?

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.

Cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research.

The level of intelligence are 'Smart, Intelligent, Brilliant, Genius, Simple.'

E=mc2

It may affront the military-minded person to suggest a regime that does not maintain any military secrets.

Artificial intellegance is no match for natural stupidity.

Don't be too hard on me. Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.

Anonymity is no excuse for stupidity.

For scientific endeavor is a natural whole the parts of which mutually support one another in a way which, to be sure, no one can anticipate.

In the shadow of the atomic bomb it has become even more apparent that all men are, indeed, brothers.

Do things sound better in your head before you say them, or do you even run them through there first?

The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.

That's my mathematician who examines problems which I put before him and checks their validity. You see, I am not myself a good mathematician.

The chicken did not cross the road. The road passed beneath the chicken.

Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay.

What you can count, doesn't count for much. What you cannot count, counts for everything.

While it is true that an inherently free and scrupulous person may be destroyed, such an individual can never be enslaved or used as a blind tool.

If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker.

I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.

I get the most joy in life out of music.

Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable and is always daydreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interests of all if he were removed from school immediately.

People will not disarm step by step; they will disarm at one blow or not at all.

The world is so full of possibilities that dogmatism is simply indecent.

The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it.

Without ethical culture, there is no salvation for humanity.

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.

The golden proportion is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult to produce and the good easy.

Gravity is a response to geometry.

Even if you have to go through hell -- go without hesitation.

For an idea that does not first seem insane, there is no hope.

Most people go on living their everyday life: half-frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragic-comedy that is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world.

It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction in the name of which they can hate one another. Once it was religion. Now it is the State.

We must remember that we do not observe nature as it actually exists, but nature exposed to our methods of perception. The theories determine what we can or cannot observe...Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.

I simply imagine it so, then go about to prove it.

I have no extraordinary ability. I'm simply an inquisitive individual.

My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born, and that is all that is necessary.

If I am right the Germans will say I was a German, and the French will say I was a Jew; If I am wrong the Germans will say I was a Jew and the French will say I was a German.

Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.

The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have not legitimacy.

It is true that my parents were worried because I began to speak fairly late, so that they even consulted a doctor. I can't say how old I was -- but surely not less than three.

I wish to do something Great and Wonderful, but I must start by doing the little things like they were Great and Wonderful.

Organized people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.

Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.

But then, after all, we are all alike, for we are all derived from the monkey.

You have to color outside the lines once in a while if you want to make your life a masterpiece.

It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.

There is an atmosphere of well-sounding oratory that likes to attach itself to dress clothes. Away with it!

Order is needed by the ignorant but it takes a genius to master chaos.

Mysticism is in fact the only criticism people cannot level against my theory.

If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.

He who cherishes the value of cultures cannot fail to be a pacifist.

I am an absolute pacifist...It is an instinctive feeling. It is a feeling that possesses me, because the murder of men is disgusting.

I have also considered many scientific plans during my pushing you around in your pram!

Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.

If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker.

A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order.

The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed.

Now to the term 'relativity theory.' I admit that it is unfortunate, and has given occasion to philosophical misunderstandings.

Out yonder there was this huge world...which stands before us like a great eternal riddle.

Don't become a seeker of success. Become a person of value.

God is a scientist, not a magician.

I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.

The next world war will be fought with stones.

We Jews have no other means of self-defense than our solidarity.

When I have one week to solve a seemingly impossible problem, I spend six days defining the problem. Then, the solution becomes obvious.

It takes a different kind of thinking to solve a problem than the kind of thinking which produced the problem.

As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.

If the workers of this world, men and women, decide not to manufacture and transport ammunition, it would end war for all time. We must do that. Dedicate our lives to drying up the source of war; ammunition factories.

At present every coachman and every waiter argues about whether or not the relativity theory is correct.

Mere unbelief in a personal God is no philosophy at all.

What I value in life is quality rather then quantity.

Matter is spirit reduced to point of visibility.

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

I believe we are here to do good. It is the responsibility of every human being to aspire to do something worthwhile, to make the world a better place than the one we found.

I believe serious progress (in the abolition of war) can be achieved only when men become organized on an international scale and refuse, as a body, to enter military or war service.

The idea of achieving security through national armament is, at the present state of military technique, a disastrous illusion.

Any brief military advantage the USA might gain with nuclear weapons would be offset by political and psychological losses and damage to American prestige. The United States might even touch off a worldwide armaments race.

The armament industry is indeed one of the greatest dangers that beset mankind. It is the hidden evil power.

Joy and amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion.

And knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man -- though often it is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.

Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality.

Despite my being an old gypsy there is a tendency to respectability inherent in old age.

What I'm really interested in is whether God could have made the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil.

Music has no effect on research work, but both are born of the same source and complement each other through the satisfaction they bestow.

This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher(when asked about completing his income tax form).

Whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life.

What is significant in one's own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?

Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion.

Let me tell you what I look like: pale face, long hair, and a tiny start of a paunch. In addition, an awkward gait, and a cigar in the mouth and a pen in pocket or hand.

We will hope that future historians will explain the morbid symptoms of present-day society as the childhood ailments of an aspiring humanity, due entirely to the excessive speed at which civilization was advancing.

The analogy I like is this imagine being able to see the world but you are deaf, and then suddenly someone gives you the ability to hear things as well -- you get an extra dimension of perception.

Growth comes through analogy; through seeing how things connect, rather than only seeing how they might be different.

If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck.

If you want the answer to anything, go sit in Nature for awhile.

One who scorns the power of intuition will never rise above the ranks of journeyman calculator.

Keep fighting until the last buzzer sounds.

It is my belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supranational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhi's method on a larger scale.

To stimulate creativity one must develop childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition.

Smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company.

Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain and gaining new and wider views.

New frameworks are like climbing a mountain -- the larger view encompasses rather than rejects the more restricted view.

Compound interest on debt was the banker's greatest invention, to capture, and enslave, a productive society.

The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us that the human race is poor in independent and creative imagination.

The daily struggle does not arise from a purpose or a program, but from an immediate need.

Scientific greatness is less a matter of intelligence than character; if the scientist refuses to compromise or accept incomplete answers and persists in grappling the most basic and difficult questions.

So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

We are here for the sake of others.

I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.

Science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

What the individual can do is to give a fine example, and to have the courage to uphold ethical values .. in a society of cynics.