Best 50 Albert Einstein Quotes About Effort and Results
Many would argue that Albert Einstein influenced the world we live in today mainly by coming up with his famous E=mc² equation, a formula referring to his theory of relativity. Although you might have heard people talking about that formula as the “death equation” (due to the development of the atomic bomb through Einstein’s work), the truth is that this important German-born physicist was a pacifist who strongly supported non-violence.
Apart from being a great scientist and a winner of a Nobel prize in physics in 1922, Albert Einstein was a public figure to remember. He played the violin, he had strong political views, and he had an original relationship to the divine, being an agnostic himself. His words always made an impact on humanity and we find the utterly fascinating. Einstein’s quotes cover all issues of contemporary living, so even today, more than 60 years after his death, they seem to have a lasting meaning. After all, their energy does prove to be relevant to the light they shed on human matters.
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Famous Albert Einstein Quotes
- Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Albert Einstein
- One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. Albert Einstein
- 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. Albert Einstein
- The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution! Albert Einstein
- Dancers are the athletes of God. Albert Einstein
- A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem. Albert Einstein
- Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind. Albert Einstein
- Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either. Albert Einstein
- Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury – to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind. Albert Einstein
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- My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred. Albert Einstein
- Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. Albert Einstein
- All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. Albert Einstein
- The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking … the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945). Albert Einstein
- The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. Albert Einstein
- I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil. Albert Einstein
- A student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up. Albert Einstein
- It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere… Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
- An empty stomach is not a good political adviser. Albert Einstein
- Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. Albert Einstein
- If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I get most joy in life out of music. Albert Einstein
- My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude… Albert Einstein
- We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Albert Einstein
- A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy? Albert Einstein
- Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs. Albert Einstein
- It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom. Albert Einstein
- Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it. Albert Einstein
- 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 meat wrapped inside it. Albert Einstein
- What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. Albert Einstein
- I don’t try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it. Albert Einstein
- The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. Albert Einstein
- All generalizations are false, including this one. Albert Einstein
- We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects. Albert Einstein
- You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. Albert Einstein
- Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. Albert Einstein
- One cannot alter a condition with the same mind set that created it in the first place. Albert Einstein
- Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it. Albert Einstein
- Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter. Albert Einstein
- The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. Albert Einstein
- I asked myself childish questions and proceeded to answer them. Albert Einstein
- Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. Albert Einstein
- If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over? Albert Einstein
- You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. Albert Einstein
- We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. Albert Einstein
- I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering. Albert Einstein
- People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Albert Einstein
- Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up. Albert Einstein
- The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why. Albert Einstein
- Why is it that no one understands me and everybody likes me. Albert Einstein
- If I could do it all again, I’d be a plumber. Albert Einstein
- I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense… Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humor its due. Albert Einstein
- The most important question a person can ask is, Is the Universe a friendly place? Albert Einstein
- The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. Albert Einstein
- The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking… Albert Einstein
- It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it. Albert Einstein
- The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. Albert Einstein
- As the area of light expands, so does the perimeter of darkness. Albert Einstein
- In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who says there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. Albert Einstein
- It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. Albert Einstein
- The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure. Albert Einstein
- The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive. Albert Einstein
- The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think. Albert Einstein
- Intelligent life on other planets? I’m not even sure there is on earth! Albert Einstein
- In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all, be a sheep. Albert Einstein
- 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 thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others…for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving. Albert Einstein
- To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. Albert Einstein
- The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another. Albert Einstein
- People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results. Albert Einstein
Einstein Quotes about Imagination
- Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions. Albert Einstein
- I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. Albert Einstein
- A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity. Albert Einstein
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