Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.
If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
God always takes the simplest way.
Love is a better teacher than duty.
The faster you go, the shorter you are.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
The man of science is a poor philosopher.
I have just got a new theory of eternity.
Force always attracts men of low morality.
The only source of knowledge is experience.
The environment is everything that isn’t me.
You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.
I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.
It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
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.
I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.
You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.
The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.
All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.
The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
To the Master’s honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton’s ground.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
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 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.
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.
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.
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.
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.
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
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.
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.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
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