Top 180 Albert Einstein Quotes of All Times

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).

Here are some of the best and most inspiring Albert Einstein quotes.

Albert Einstein Quotes

• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein

• A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
• A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
• A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
• A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
• A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
• All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
• All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.
• An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
• Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

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

• Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

• Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
• As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
• 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.
• Before God, we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.
• Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
• Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

• Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
• Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.

• Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.

• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
  – Albert Einstein

• Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
• Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
• Force always attracts men of low morality.

• Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

  – Albert Einstein

• God always takes the simplest way.
• God does not play dice.
• God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.
• Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

• He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
• He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
• Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!

• He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.

  – Albert Einstein

• Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
• I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

• I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

• I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
• I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
• I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
• I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
• I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
• I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
• I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
• I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.
• I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.
• I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
• I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
• I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

• If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

  – Albert Einstein

• If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
• If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.
• If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
• If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
• If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
• Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

• Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
  – Albert Einstein

• In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
• In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
• Information is not knowledge.

• Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

• Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

• Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
• It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
• It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
• It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
• It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
• It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
• It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
• It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
• It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
• It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.
• It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

• It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

• Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.
• Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

• Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

• Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

• Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

• Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
• Love is a better teacher than duty.
• Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
• Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.
• Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
• Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
• My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
• Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
• Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
• Never lose a holy curiosity.
• No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
• No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
• Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
• Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

• Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

• One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

• Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

• Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
• Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
• Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

• Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

• Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
• Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
• Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

• Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
• Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.
• Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
• Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
• Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
• Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological criminal.
• That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
• The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

• The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

  – Albert Einstein

• The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.

• The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

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

• The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone dead.

• The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
• The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
• The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
• The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

• The man of science is a poor philosopher.
• The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
• The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
• The only real valuable thing is intuition.

• The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

• The only source of knowledge is experience.

• The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
• The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
• The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain, children, all our lives.
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

• The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

• The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

• The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

• The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

• The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

• There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

• There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
• There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.
• There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
• Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

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

  – Albert Einstein

• To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
• To the Master’s honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton’s ground.
• True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

• True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.

• We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

  – Albert Einstein

• We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
• We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

• We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

• Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

• When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
• When the solution is simple, God is answering.
• When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.

• When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.

  – Albert Einstein

• Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
• Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
• You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.
• You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

• You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.