530 quotes
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.
For scientific endeavor is a natural whole the parts of which mutually support one another in a way which, to be sure, no one can anticipate.
I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to me so bad and unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.
I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.
Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
My Credo (1932)
Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit... not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil.
A people that were to honor falsehood, defamation, fraud, and murder would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long.
Religion and Science: Irreconcilable? (1948)
I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God.
Science and Religion (1941)
A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.
Only Then Shall We Find Courage (1946)
A man's value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.
The World As I See It (1949)
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
A truly rational theory would allow us to deduce the elementary particles (electron, etc.) and not be forced to state them a priori.
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.
Sidelights on Relativity (1922)
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 sometimes thinks he senses it.
Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
The most beautiful fate of a physical theory is to point the way to the establishment of a more inclusive theory, in which it lives on as a limiting case.
As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.
Viereck interview (1929)
The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.
Principles of Research (1918)
If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.
The state is made for man, not man for the state. And in this respect science resembles the state.
The World As I See It (1949)