When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn’t realize that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.

It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have

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...

Only a life in the service of others is worth living.

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

The relativity principle in connection with the basic Maxwellian equations demands that the mass should be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body; light transfers mass. With radium there should be a...

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd...

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.

If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important...

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

Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.

PARAPHRASE: Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else. It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration.

La vie c’est comme la bicyclette : quand on arrête de pédaler on tombe.

Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.

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...

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker. The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that...

There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom

The environment is everything that isn’t me.

A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.

We already know that the world is far more complex, and strange, and beautiful than we thought.

There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world...

That’s why we brought Dan on,

Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live…. [We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into...

Many times a day I realize how much my own life is built on the labors of my fellowmen, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as...

Since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have to say that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps it is well that...

It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind

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 occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

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

Still there are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement...

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

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.

I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy.

The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

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

Beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds...