50 Wise Quotes by Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.Death of a Genius: His fourth dimension, time, overtakes Einstein, Subsection: Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity' by William Miller in Life Magazine (May 2, 1955)

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.Einstein Is Found Hiding On Birthday: Busy With Gift Microscope in New York Times (March 15, 1929)

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.Letter to Morris Raphael Cohen (March 19, 1940)

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.Essay to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (May 23, 1953)

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.The World As I See It (1931)

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.Speech made in honor of Thomas Mann, when Mann was given the Einstein Prize given by the Jewish Forum (January 1939)

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space.Letter to Robert Marcus (February 12, 1950)

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.Speech to the New History Society (December 14, 1930)

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.Morals and Emotions (1938)

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.Letter to Jost Winteler (1901)

Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality.Miscellaneous, in Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931)

The mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?, in Annalen der Physik 18 (1905)

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.Physics and Reality (1936)

The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.From a conversation with Indian mystic, poet, and musician Rabindranath Tagore in Berlin (August 19, 1930)

The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.Einstein's tribute to Pablo Casals (March 30, 1953)

Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.Three Letter to a Friend of Peace, in Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querida Verlag (1934)

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.What I Believe, in Forum and Century 84 (October 1930)

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.The quotation on a plaque in the astronomy building of Pasadena City College. Einstein dedicated the building and its observatory (February 26, 1931)

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.Public Statement in England (September 15, 1933)

Sometimes one pays most for things one gets for nothing.What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, in The Saturday Evening Post (October 26, 1929)

In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.Essay to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (May 23, 1953)

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.Essay to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (May 23, 1953)

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands the whole person.From a statement about Arturo Toscanini on the presentation of the American Hebrew Medal to him (1938)

Words are and remain an empty sound, and the road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.On Education (1936)

People who fail to regard the truth seriously in small matters, cannot be trusted in matters that are great.From an undelivered message to the world, April 1955, intended to address the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Body and soul are not two different things, but only two different ways of perceiving the same thing.Aphorism, in Huntington, New York (1937)

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.What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, in The Saturday Evening Post (October 26, 1929)

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.Morals and Emotions (1938)

We cannot despair of humanity, since we are ourselves human beings.Three Letter to a Friend of Peace, in Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querida Verlag (1934)

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.The True Value of a Human Being, in Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querida Verlag (1934)

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck in The Saturday Evening Post (October 26, 1929)

Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.On Education (1936)

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.Science and Religion (1939)

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.In response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test: New York Times (May 18, 1921)

Study and in general the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.Letter to Adrianna Enriques (October 1921)

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.Science and religion (1941)

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.Obituary for Emmy Noether, letter to the Editor of The New York Times (May 5, 1935)

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.Letter to the family of his lifelong friend Michele Besso, after learning of his death (March 1955)

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking.Physics and Reality (March 1936)

Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it. Speech to students at the California Institute of Technology, in Einstein Sees Lack in Applying Science, The New York Times (February 17, 1931)

The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.Maxwell's Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality (1931)

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.Letter to California student E. Holzapfel (March 1951)

It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one’s balance.Letter to Eduard Einstein (February 5, 1930)

It is easier to denature plutonium than it is to denature the evil spirit of man.The Real Problem Is in the Hearts of Men, in The New York Times Magazine (June 23, 1946)

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to think too much about the future.Written at age seventeen for a school essay in French entitled 'My Future Plans' (September 18, 1896)

Force always attracts men of low morality.The World As I See It (1931)

Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do – but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.A scribbled response on a letter from Frank Wall (1933)

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.Death of a Genius: His fourth dimension, time, overtakes Einstein, Subsection: Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity' by William Miller in Life Magazine (May 2, 1955)

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.In answer to a question asked by the editors of Youth, a journal of Young Israel of Williamsburg, NY. Quoted in the New York Times (June 20, 1932)

If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.Said to Samuel J. Woolf, Berlin (Summer 1929). Published in the New York Times (August 18, 1929)

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.No source

If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.No source

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.No source

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.No source

The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.No source

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.No source

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.No source