A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind...

Play is the highest form of research.

Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.

Deux choses sont infinies : l’Univers et la bêtise humaine. Mais, en ce qui concerne l’Univers, je n’en ai pas encore acquis la certitude absolue.

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

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.

Human beings, vegetables, or comic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

I thought marketing this product to kids ages four and older is outrageous,

Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it

Before God we are equally wise and equally foolish.

We can understand almost anything, but we can’t understand how we understand.

The legs are the wheels of creativity.

Unless Americans come to realize that they are not stronger in the world because they have the bomb but weaker because of their vulnerability to atomic attack, they are not likely to conduct their policy...

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs

Never lose a holy curiosity.

Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological...

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but...

Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.

Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects...

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

The framing of a problem is often far more essential than its solution

A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.

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.

The value of achievement lies in the achieving.

I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the...

The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

The thinking that we are has brought us to where we have already been.In order to go somewhere else, we must think in a different way.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

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

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed amoung advanced minds that it was time that...

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else unless it is an enemy.

We come now to the question: what is a priori certain or necessary, respectively in geometry (doctrine of space) or its foundations? Formerly we thought everything; nowadays we think nothing. Already the distance-concept is logically...

You teach me baseball and I’ll teach you relativity. No, we must not. You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball.

So long as there are men there will be wars. So long as there are men there will be wars.

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,...

The ideas that have lighted my way and, time after time, have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.

For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion, however tenacious.

Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources

Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.