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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

—  Albert Einstein

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. This new phenomena would also lead to the construction of bombs ... A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

—  Albert Einstein

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

—  Albert Einstein

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.

—  Albert Einstein

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.

—  Albert Einstein

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

—  Albert Einstein

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.

—  Albert Einstein

Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you.

—  Albert Einstein

It is high time that the idea of success be replaced by the idea of service.

—  Albert Einstein

We cannot dispair of humanity, since we are ourselves human beings.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able toperceive with our frail and feeble mind. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe, forms my idea of God.

—  Albert Einstein

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. That's relativity.

—  Albert Einstein

During a lecture: This has been done elegantly by Minkowski; but chalk is cheaper than grey matter, and we will do it as it comes.

—  Albert Einstein

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

Although words exist for the most part for the transmission of ideas, there are some which produce such violent disturbance in our feelings that the role they play in the transmission of ideas is lost in the background.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

No, this trick won't work ... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

—  Albert Einstein

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

—  Albert Einstein

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; 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.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.

—  Albert Einstein

Of what significance is one's existence, one is basically unaware. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? The bitter and the sweet come from outside. The hard from within, from one's own efforts. For the most part I do what my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn such respect and love for it.

—  Albert Einstein

I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. 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.

—  Albert Einstein

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

—  Albert Einstein

The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

—  Albert Einstein

I am absolutely convinced that no amount of wealth in the world can help humanity move forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker. The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistably invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Ghandi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?

—  Albert Einstein

Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater.

—  Albert Einstein

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

—  Albert Einstein

Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men ... shall we ... be able to speak of mankind as civilized.

—  Albert Einstein

About Newton: Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort.

—  Albert Einstein

The truth of a theory is in your mind, not in your eyes.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

—  Albert Einstein

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.

—  Albert Einstein

It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.

—  Albert Einstein

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

—  Albert Einstein

All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them.

—  Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

—  Albert Einstein

The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

—  Albert Einstein

Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.

—  Albert Einstein

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

—  Albert Einstein

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicty of its premises is.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

—  Albert Einstein

Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

—  Albert Einstein

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

—  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.

—  Albert Einstein

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

—  Albert Einstein

The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.

—  Albert Einstein

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

—  Albert Einstein

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.

—  Albert Einstein

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

—  Albert Einstein

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.

—  Albert Einstein

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

—  Albert Einstein

The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own efforts.

—  Albert Einstein

Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.

—  Albert Einstein

How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?

—  Albert Einstein

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

—  Albert Einstein

You can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.

—  Albert Einstein

I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.

—  Albert Einstein

Before God we are equally wise and equally foolish.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depends on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life

—  Albert Einstein

I want to know God's thoughts ... the rest are details.

—  Albert Einstein

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

A man's moral worth is not measured by what his religious beliefs are but rather by what emotional impulses he has received from Nature during his lifetime.

—  Albert Einstein

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

—  Albert Einstein

I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

—  Albert Einstein

Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er icht. The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not.

—  Albert Einstein

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

—  Albert Einstein

The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein

The concern for man and his destiny must always be the chief interest of all technical effort. Never forget it among your diagrams and equations.

—  Albert Einstein

We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.

—  Albert Einstein

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.

—  Albert Einstein

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

—  Albert Einstein

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.

—  Albert Einstein