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Albert Einstein Quotes

Browse 40 quotes about Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein Quotes

“Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn’t a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that “God does not play dice with the universe.” He was wrong, and it’s too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: “Einstein! Stop telling God what to do.”

GodQuantum MechanicsNobel PrizeAlbert EinsteinTheory Of RelativityNiels Bohr
Book:The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
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“I think a strong claim can be made that the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art. This is best seen in the theoretical aspects of Physical Science. The mathematical theorist builds up on certain assumptions and according to well understood logical rules, step by step, a stately edifice, while his imaginative power brings out clearly the hidden relations between its parts. A well constructed theory is in some respects undoubtedly an artistic production. A fine example is the famous Kinetic Theory of Maxwell. ... The theory of relativity by Einstein, quite apart from any question of its validity, cannot but be regarded as a magnificent work of art.”

ArtScienceTheoryDiscoveryLogicMathematicsMathMagnificentScientific TheoryEinsteinMaxwellAlbert EinsteinTheory Of RelativityJames Clerk MaxwellJames MaxwellKinetic Theory
Author:Ernest Rutherford
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“Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).”

FreedomFree WillHuman WillAlbert EinsteinSam Harris
Author:Albert Einstein
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“Einstein, twenty-six years old, only three years away from crude privation, still a patent examiner, published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 five papers on entirely different subjects. Three of them were among the greatest in the history of physics. One, very simple, gave the quantum explanation of the photoelectric effect—it was this work for which, sixteen years later, he was awarded the Nobel prize. Another dealt with the phenomenon of Brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of tiny particles suspended in a liquid: Einstein showed that these movements satisfied a clear statistical law. This was like a conjuring trick, easy when explained: before it, decent scientists could still doubt the concrete existence of atoms and molecules: this paper was as near to a direct proof of their concreteness as a theoretician could give. The third paper was the special theory of relativity, which quietly amalgamated space, time, and matter into one fundamental unity. This last paper contains no references and quotes to authority. All of them are written in a style unlike any other theoretical physicist's. They contain very little mathematics. There is a good deal of verbal commentary. The conclusions, the bizarre conclusions, emerge as though with the greatest of ease: the reasoning is unbreakable. It looks as though he had reached the conclusions by pure thought, unaided, without listening to the opinions of others. To a surprisingly large extent, that is precisely what he had done.”

MatterReasonScienceTimeSpaceHistoryMathematicsMathPhysicsRelativityQuantum PhysicsNobel PrizeEinsteinAlbert EinsteinTheoretical PhysicsConclusionsTheory Of RelativityBrownianAnnalen Der PhysikRobert Brown
Book:Variety of Men
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“People who have fully prepared always save time. Albert Einstein was right to teach that if he is given six hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first four sharpening the axes. When you are done with your action plans, work will be easier!”

PeopleActionTimeHoursWorkPlansHard WorkSixFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorPlanningPreparationWork HardSavePreparednessFirstPrepareSpend6Albert EinsteinAxeSharpenTeachesSave TimeAction PlansAlbert Einstein QuotesChopFully PreparedFull Preparation6 HoursAlbert Einstein LifeChop A TreeChop Down A TreeSharpen The AxeSix Hours
Book:The Great Hand Book of Quotes
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“On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a sponsor and donor of this soon-to-be-opened institution, while an accompanying leaflet has enticing photographs of Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Sandy Koufax, Irving Berlin, Estee Lauder, Barbra Streisand, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. There is something faintly kitsch about this, as there is in the habit of those Jewish papers that annually list Jewish prize-winners from the Nobel to the Oscars. (It is apparently true that the London Jewish Chronicle once reported the result of a footrace under the headline 'Goldstein Fifteenth.') However, I think I may send a contribution. Other small 'races' have come from unpromising and hazardous beginnings to achieve great things—no Roman would have believed that the brutish inhabitants of the British Isles could ever amount to much—and other small 'races,' too, like Gypsies and Armenians, have outlived determined attempts to eradicate and exterminate them. But there is something about the persistence, both of the Jews and their persecutors, that does seem to merit a museum of its own.”

RaceUnited StatesBigotryPhiladelphiaJewsArmeniansAntisemitismBritonsArmenian GenocideAlbert EinsteinRomansGypsiesBob DylanBritish IslesBetty FriedanAmerican JewsBarbra StreisandEstee LauderIrving BerlinIsaac Bashevis SingerSandy Koufax
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“My dad said to me a few years ago: "There's no harm in thinking." We were talking about Crazy Uncle Albert and whether it was right to use your brain to build weapons. He said, "You can't expect people not to think. Not to know things just because they COULD be bad." I said, "Yeah, but then they built it and a hundred thousand people died." My dad laughed and said there were a lot of steps between the thinking and the doing. Which I know, duh. All I was saying is that when you think of doing something, you don't always know the consequences. For a while people THOUGHT about building the bomb, but nothing happened. In the end it was a lot of different people doing a lot of different things, most of which had nothing to do with the bomb, that did make it happen. I think about that sometimes. Who was the person who had the first thought, the one that started it all? And after they had the thought, what was the first thing they did? I know my uncle never thought, Hey, all this great science- one day I'll use it to kill a whole bunch of people. You just look at his picture; he's not that kind of person. And yet, I guess in a way he sort of is.”

ThinkingAlbert EinsteinHead GamesJudith EllisMariah Fredericks
Book:Head Games
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“A religião e a criação das bombas atômicas é um tema que precisa ser analisado com mais cuidado, e menos acusações. De fato, o Projeto Manhattan, que levou ao desenvolvimento das bombas atômicas lançadas sobre Hiroshima e Nagasaki em 1945, envolveu muitos cientistas de diversas origens religiosas. Robert Oppenheimer, que liderou o projeto, era de origem judaica, e muitos outros cientistas envolvidos tinham diferentes crenças religiosas. Albert Einstein, embora não tenha participado diretamente do Projeto Manhattan, foi um dos que alertaram sobre o potencial desenvolvimento de armas nucleares pela Alemanha nazista. Ele era um deísta, acreditando em um Deus não intervencionista, e enfrentou discriminação na Europa por suas crenças religiosas e sua origem judaica. A questão da religião e da ciência é complexa e multifacetada. A ciência, como um método de investigação, é neutra em relação a crenças religiosas, mas os cientistas, como indivíduos, trazem suas próprias crenças e valores para o seu trabalho. A nova onda de ateísmo ganhou força nas últimas décadas, especialmente com o avanço da ciência e a secularização de muitas sociedades. Então, não, usar a bomba atômica como forma de jogar a bola no terreno da ciência para defender religião não funciona. Menos ainda acusar o ateísmo de ser responsável por mortes em massa como no caso de Putin e Hitler.”

CristianismoReligiãoAlbert Einstein
Book:Seria a Bíblia um livro científico?: Por que a Bíblia Sagrada não deve ser levada a sério e como argumentar contra ela (Estudos Bíblicos para ateus 2)
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“A palavra Deus para mim não é nada mais que a expressão e produto da fraqueza humana, a Bíblia é uma coleção de lendas honradas, mas ainda assim primitivas, que são bastante infantis." Albert Einstein”

CristianismoAlbert EinsteinBíblia
Book:Seria a Bíblia um livro científico?: Por que a Bíblia Sagrada não deve ser levada a sério e como argumentar contra ela (Estudos Bíblicos para ateus 2)
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“Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation.”

ReligionPoliticsAtheismLibertarianismSecularismSocial ClassInternationalismAlbert Einstein
Book:Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports
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“Why should I have to hide the fact that I don't believe there’s a supreme being? There’s no proof of it. There’s no harm in saying you’re an atheist. It doesn't mean you treat people any differently. I live by the Golden Rule to do unto others, as you'd want to be treated. I just simply don't believe in religion, and I don’t believe necessarily that there’s a supreme being that watches over all of us. I follow the teachings of George Carlin. George said he worshipped the sun. He was a fellow atheist. I’m in good company … Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Charles Darwin. It’s not like I’m not with good company and intelligent people. There have been some good, intelligent atheists who have lived in the world.”

BeliefCompanyAtheismAtheistGolden RuleSupreme BeingEinsteinDarwinCharles DarwinMark TwainAlbert EinsteinTwainCarlinGeorge Carlin
Author:Jesse Ventura
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“La labor más importante del ser humano es buscar la moralidad en sus actos. Es de lo que depende nuestro equilibrio interno, y nuestra propia existencia. La moralidad en nuestros actos es lo único que puede conferir belleza y dignidad a la vida. Quizá la principal tarea de la educación sea convertirlo en una fuerza vital, e inscribirlo claramente en las conciencias. Hay que evitar que los cimientos de la moral dependan de algún mito o estén ligados a alguna autoridad, debido al riesgo de que las dudas sobre el mito o sobre la legitimidad de la autoridad pongan en peligro los cimientos del buen juicio y de la acción correcta.”

DiosEspañolAlbert EinsteinMitoMoralidad
Author:Albert Einstein
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“If black holes were of a 3d construct, then it is feasible that we should have seen a tail end of one by now, but we haven't. This leads me to believe that black holes are actually flat. We only perceive them as having depth, just like the 3d paintings that we see around the world. This then would also lead me to believe that there is no outlet within this universe unless we do don't recognize the exit mechanism. A whirlpool has depth and volume, but say if it didn't, then would that too be a black hole within a water world?”

Quote Of The DayPhysicsAnthony T HincksHincksOuter SpaceWhirlpoolsAlbert EinsteinBlack Holes
Author:Anthony T. Hincks
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“É importante notar que essa redução, a de que o ateísmo seria somente mais uma religião, mas “negativa”, não resiste a uma análise filosófica mais rigorosa. O ateísmo, enquanto posição conceitual mínima, não constitui um sistema religioso alternativo, mas a rejeição ou suspensão de proposições teístas específicas. Transformá-lo em “religião negativa” implica ampliar semanticamente o termo religião até que ele perca qualquer delimitação operacional. Como gosto de explicar: a ausência de barco não é um tipo de barco; careca não é um corte de cabelo.”

ReligiãoAteísmoAlbert Einstein
Book:O Paradoxo de Einstein : Ciência, Ética e o Deus Cósmico (Mente Ateísta Livro 2)
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“One day at Fenner's (the university cricket ground at Cambridge), just before the last war, G. H. Hardy and I were talking about Einstein. Hardy had met him several times, and I had recently returned from visiting him. Hardy was saying that in his lifetime there had only been two men in the world, in all the fields of human achievement, science, literature, politics, anything you like, who qualified for the Bradman class. For those not familiar with cricket, or with Hardy's personal idiom, I ought to mention that “the Bradman class” denoted the highest kind of excellence: it would include Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Newton, Archimedes, and maybe a dozen others. Well, said Hardy, there had only been two additions in his lifetime. One was Lenin and the other Einstein.”

ScienceLiteraturePoliticsNewtonShakespeareCambridgeWilliam ShakespeareEinsteinTolstoyLeninAlbert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLeo TolstoyArchimedesVladimir LeninG H HardyBradman ClassCount Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyGodfrey HardyGodfrey Harold HardyLev Nikolayevich TolstoyVladimir Ilyich Lenin
Book:Variety of Men
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“[Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Nazism:] Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime. Now, just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianisms – the most finished example, the most perfected one, the most ruthless and refined one: that of National Socialism, the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheists, thinkers and many others, to the United States, a country of separation of church and state, that gave them welcome – if it’s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he’s doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins, “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary system? Again, this is not a difference of emphasis between us. To suggest that there’s something fascistic about me and about my beliefs is something I won't hear said and you shouldn't believe.”

ScienceUnited StatesEvolutionGermanyCatholicismFascismPopeNaziSeparation Of Church And StateNazismSuperstitiousJewishDarwinismHitlerBarbaricMein KampfEinsteinFreudDarwinAdolf HitlerCharles DarwinAlbert EinsteinVaticanSigmund FreudFuhrerFascistic
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues. I'm not saying you're more intelligent than Aristotle, or wiser. For all I know, Aristotle's the cleverest person who ever lived. That's not the point. The point is only that science is cumulative, and we live later.”

ScienceUnderstandingKnowledgeIntellectNewtonWatsonEinsteinDarwinPlanckAristotleCharles DarwinAlbert EinsteinIsaac NewtonPolymathJames WatsonMax PlanckCrickFrancis CrickJames D Watson
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Having consulted several books on the subject of dogs, one on rough terriers in particular, Beatrix was fairly certain that training Albert with techniques involving dominance or punishment would not be at all effective. In fact, they would probably make his behavior worse. Terriers, the book had said, frequently tried to outsmart humans. The only method left was to reward his good behavior with praise and food and kindness. "Of course you're unhappy, poor boy. He's gone away, and your place is by his side. But I've come to collect you, and while he's gone, we'll work on your manners. Perhaps we can't turn you into a perfect lapdog... but I'll help you learn how to get on with others." She paused before adding with a reflective grin. "Of course, I can't manage to behave properly in polite society. I've always thought there's a fair amount of dishonesty involved in politeness. There, you're quiet now." She stood and pulled at the latch. "Here is your first rule, Albert: it's very rude to maul people." Albert burst out and jumped on her. Had she not been holding on to the support of the shed's frame, she would have been knocked over. Whining and wagging his tail, Albert stood on his hind legs and dove his face against her.”

DogAlbert EinsteinBeatrix HathawayMethodsAwwwwwwwwwwwwTerrier
Book:Love in the Afternoon
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“I realized that more and more I was saying, 'It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.' And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided — my wife and I — that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, 'Well, the authorities say such and such '.”

WarDeathSufferingPeaceAuthorityDestructionEinsteinNobel LaureateAlbert EinsteinDispute
Author:Linus Pauling
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