Einstein Quotes

Life lessons of Albert Einstein 

“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."

"From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received." 

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men."

"When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves."

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

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

"To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything."

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

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

"Imagination is the highest form of research." 

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."

"The only real valuable thing is intuition."

"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."

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

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

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

"What a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of the other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous."

"All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual."

"Information is not knowledge." 

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

"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."

"It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service."

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

"It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it."

"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community."

"The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self."

"And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way."

"Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury -- to me these have always been contemptible. I assume that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind."

"If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."

On Politics, War and Peace 

"To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself." 

"Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work."

"Politics is far more complicated than physics."

"Yes, we now have to divide up our time like that, between politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."

"The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the 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."

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."   

"I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state." 

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader."  

"An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For  force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels."

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

"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 world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

"The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while"

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

"I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them!" 

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

"If I had foreseen Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would have torn up my formula in 1905." 

"I happened to have nothing to do with the actual research and development of the bomb. My letter to President Roosevelt was nothing but a letter of introduction for Dr. Szilard who wanted to create adequate contact between scientists and Washington regarding the Manhattan project. I had only handled the problem of nuclear defense when it was reported to me that the Germans were working on such an atomic bomb and, in fact, had uranium mines in Czechoslovakia in their control. I felt it was imperative for the United States to proceed in the development of the bomb, before Hitler used it to destroy London. I also felt that we had to show Germany the power of America, for power is the only language barbarians understand. And when I later learned that the bomb had been created and was to be used against Japan, I did all in my power to avert President Truman from this plan, since publicly dropping it on an empty island would have been sufficient to convince Japan or any nation to sue for peace."

"The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man."

"As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. That is not an attempt to say when it will come, but only that it is sure to come. That was true before the atomic bomb was made. What has changed is the destructiveness of war."

"One cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

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

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

"Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars."

"One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion. Unless the concept of peace based on law gathers behind it the force and zeal of a religion, it can hardly hope to succeed." 

"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. You cannot subjugate a nation forcibly unless you wipe out every man, woman, and child. Unless you wish to use such drastic measures, you must find a way of settling your disputes without resort to arms."

"Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?" 

"My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred."

"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."

"We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart."

"Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools."

"I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind."

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."

"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

"The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service."

"If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery."

"The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler."

"Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes - goodwill among men and peace on Earth."

"Remember your humanity and forget the rest."

On Education

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” 

“Education is not received. It is achieved.” 

“The most important method of education always has consisted of that in which the pupil was urged to actual performance.” 

“The sole function of education...[is] to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.”  

"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."

“The most valuable thing a teacher can impart to children is not knowledge and understanding per se but a longing for knowledge and understanding, and an appreciation for intellectual values, whether they be artistic, scientific, or moral.”

“Studying, and striving for truth and beauty in general, is a sphere in which we are allowed to be children throughout life.”

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” 

“The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society; it is that education which in the main is founded upon the desire for successful activity and acknowledgement.”

“A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and
creativity.” 

“The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge.”  

“To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject.” 

“The only rational way of educating is to be an example.” 

“Example isn’t another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.”

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

"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."

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

“Most teachers waste their time by asking questions that are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing.”

“The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.” 

“Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice.”

“Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn the liberating beauty of the intellect for your own personal joy and for the profit of the community to which your later work will belong.”

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

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” 

"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."

"The greatest knowledge a person can possess is the address of the local library."

“Once you stop learning, you start dying.” 

“Today also there is an urge toward social progress, toward tolerance and freedom of thought, toward a larger political unity… But the students at our universities have ceased as completely as their teachers to embody the hopes and ideals of the people.”

“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.”

“We must begin to inculcate our children against militarism by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its horror. I would teach peace rather than war.” 

“Schools need not preach political doctrine to defend democracy. If they shape men capable of critical thought and trained in social attitudes, that is all that is necessary.”  

“Freedom of teaching and of opinion in book or press is the foundation for the sound and natural development of any people.”  

“By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.”  

“It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. We find it easier to add a new study or course or kind of school than to recognize existing conditions so as to meet the need.”