Appearance
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You can't blame gravity for falling in love.
"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."
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.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
"Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized."
The only source of knowledge is experience.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
"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."
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Love is a better teacher than duty.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas."
The environment is everything that isn't me.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
"I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."
"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."
"In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same."
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
"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."
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them."
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
"To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground."
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.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone."
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.
One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
"That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
"I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards."
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute."
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.
Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
"The faster you go, the shorter you are."
"Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature."
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
"I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind."
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue."
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
"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."
"A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be."
"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree."
Force always attracts men of low morality.
"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"
"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."
"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
"Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God."
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
God does not play dice.
I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
"Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature."
"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 to understand in the world is the income tax.
"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music."
Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
"When the solution is simple, God is answering."
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
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 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.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.
I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.
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.
"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
Information is not knowledge.
"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age."
It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
"All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions."
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.
Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
"Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity."
You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one.
There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.
"God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean."
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
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.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."
I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
"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."
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
"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."
It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
"In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself."
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
God always takes the simplest way.
I have just got a new theory of eternity.
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
"We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings."
The man of science is a poor philosopher.
"The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder."