Einstein, Albert (1879 - 1955)
알버트 아인슈타인.
US (German-born) physicist; discovered special relativity 1905 & general relativity 1915-1916; explained photoelectric effect & Brownian motion; Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
Quotes ¶
- "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. (He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.) My religiosity consists in a humble admiratation of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God." --from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
- "...a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.... The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." --Address at the Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939, published in "Out of My Later Years", New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.
- "우리가 경험 할 수 있는 가장 아름다운 것은 신비이다. 그것은 진정한 예술과 진정한 과학의 탄생을 가능케 하는 기본적인 감정이다. 더 이상 그것을 경이로워하지 못하고, 그것에 경탄하지 못하고, 그것을 알지 못하는 사람은 죽은것이나 다름 없으며 눈뜬 장님인 것이다. 설사 두려움과 혼돈되었을지라도, 신비의 경험은 종교를 탄생시킨 것이다. 우리가 이해 할 수 없는 무엇인가가 존재한다는 인식, 가장 심오한 이치와 가장 찬란한 아름다움에 대한 자각, 그것들의 가장 근본적인 형태에서만 우리의 이성이 이해할 수 있는, 바로 이 인식과 이 감정이 진정한 신앙을 만들어내는 것이다. 그런 의미에서, 그리고 오로지 그런 의미에서만, 나는 깊은 신앙심을 가진 사람이다." ("The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which 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. 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 in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.") --from "The World as I See It"
- "The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning."
- "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." --"The World as I See It"
- "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --"Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930
- "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- "내 종교적 신념에 대해서 널리 퍼진 이야기는 물론 거짓말이다. 그 거짓말은 지금도 (누군가에 의해)의도적으로 반복되고 있다. 나는 인격화된 신를 믿지 않으며, 그 사실을 부인하기는 커녕 분명하게 표현해왔다. 만약 내게 종교적이다라고 할만한 것이 있다면, 그것은 우리의 과학이 규명할 수 있는 한도 내에서의 이 세상의 구조에 대한, 속박되지 않은 경애일 것이다." ("It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.") --1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
- "What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism"
- "The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action."
- "Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being." --1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray. Source: "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann
- "The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer become his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task..." --"Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium", published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941
- "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." --In an obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955
- "I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet." --In a letter, 1954
- "You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religiosity of the naive man. For the latter, God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands, so to speak, in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe.
But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation... There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection... It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages." --Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934
- 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.
- I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias.
- 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, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
- ...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
- 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.
- I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play.
- You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. --when asked to describe radio
- 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.
- 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.
- Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
- 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. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.
- 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.
Short Quotes ¶
- "만약 사람들이 오로지 벌을 무서워하고 상을 원해서 선한 행동을 한다면, 우리는 정말이지 딱한 존재들이다." ("If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.")
- "나는 개인의 영생을 믿지 않으며, 도덕이란, 초월자의 권위 따위와는 상관 없는, 전적으로 인간들의 관심사라고 생각한다." ("I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.") --from The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.
- "I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos." --in the London Observer, 5 April 1964, on his problems with quantum mechanics and not, as popularly misinterpreted, an expression of religious belief.
- "The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them." --In a letter to Sigmund Freud, 30 July 1932
- 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.
- Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
- Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
- Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
- I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
- I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
- If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
- If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
- Imagination is more important than knowledge...
- Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
- My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
- Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- 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.
- Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
- The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
- The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
- To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
- Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
- Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
- We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
- Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our 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.
- Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. --"Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941
- Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. --"Out of My Later Years," 1950
- It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs. --"Treasury for the Free World," 1946
- Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
- Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
- If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
- Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
- The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
- You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
- At any rate, I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice. --In a letter to Max Born, 1926
- If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut. --Observer, Jan. 15, 1950
- The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. --Telegram, 24 May 1946
- I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
- We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.
- The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.
- In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
- When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
- It is the theory that decides what we can observe.
- It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
- When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
- The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
- If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
- It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
- Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
- The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
- 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 hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
- I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
- The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
- Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
- Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
- God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
- The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
- Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
- Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
- No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
- Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
- 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.
- It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
- True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist
- Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.
- "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 a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
- Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
- Nothing in the world makes people so afraid as the influence of independent-minded people.
- Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
- Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... it takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
- Never underestimate your own ignorance.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), speech
- When all think alike, no one thinks very much.
- The tragedy of life is what dies in the hearts and souls of people while they live.
- There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
- My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe.
- I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.
- Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
- 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.
- 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. --AlbertEinstein, Gary Young M.D.'s lecture on ChaosTheory and Buddhism in Oregon State University on 04/17/03 (SGI-USA)
- Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
- When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that their are bigger and better things to worry about.
- The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
- If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I’m a German, and Germany will say that I’m a jew.
- God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.
- Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man. --J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), speaking of AlbertEinstein
- You're aware the boy failed my grade school math class, I take it? And not that many years later he's teaching college. Now I ask you: Is that the sorriest indictment of the American educational system you ever heard? (pauses to light cigarette.) No aptitude at all for long division, but never mind. It's him they ask to split the atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But then, I suppose it's like the man says, "It's not what you know..." --Karl Arbeiter: former teacher of AlbertEinstein