Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater.

One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.

Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.

It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. We find it easier to add a new study or course or kind of...

Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.

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

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.”(Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)

Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.The work is a...

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

How was I able to live alone before, my little everything? Without you I lack self-confidence, passion for work, and enjoyment of life–in short, without you, my life is no life.[Written to his wife, Mileva]

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies… It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than...

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

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

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

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

When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and...

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

The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.

Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.

I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.

Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work

The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand...

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from our desires and our fears. Intuition tells us that that is true also of our fellows and of...

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and...

for those who would joyously march in rank and file, they have already earned my contempt, for they were given a large brain by accident when a spinal chord would have sufficed.

One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final...

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

If tomorrow were never to come, it would not be worth living today.

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one...

No one does anything right in life, until they realize that they are making a mistake

I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.

While it is true that an inherently free and scrupulous person may be destroyed, such an individual can never be enslaved or used as a blind tool

Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible.

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain...

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion,...

In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts.

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.

God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.