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...

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

The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.

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

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

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

I do not know how the third world war will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the fourth… rocks.”

It is appallingly obvious our technology has exceeded our humanity

Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.

The horizon of many people is a circle with zero radius which they call their point of view.

MacMillan has this particular quote simply as God doesn’t play dice. and notes that it is often quoted as doesn’t play dice with the universe

Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey (War) would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been...

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.

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.

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...

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither...

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