| On The Universe |
| Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. |
| The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. |
| A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his 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. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner secret. |
| Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. 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. |
| On Life |
| 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. |
| 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 pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. |
| A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy. |
| Only a life lived for others is a life worth while. |
| A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others. |
| The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. |
| He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. |
| Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love. |
| Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift. |
| Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. |
| 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. |
| The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. |
| Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18. |
| Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. |
| If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor. |
| Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. |
| If A equals success, then the formula is: A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. |
| Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age. |
| The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. |
| Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. |
| 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. |
| Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labor of all. |
| The satisfaction of physical needs is indeed the indispensable precondition of a satisfactory existence, but in itself is not enough. In order to be content men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accord with their personal characteristics and abilities. |
| Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion toward men and toward objective things. |
| The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self. |
| 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. |
| How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? |
| Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love. |
| 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. THAT'S relativity. |
| 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. |
| On War and Peace |
| An empty stomach is not a good political advisor. |
| Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race. |
| We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. |
| Violence sometimes may have cleared away obstructions quickly, but it never has proved itself creative. |
| Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it. |
| The discovery of nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than did the discovery of matches. We only must do everything in our power to safeguard against its abuse. Only a supranational organization, equipped with a sufficiently strong executive power, can protect us. |
| Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. |
| 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 fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. |
| Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. |
| Mankind's desire for peace can be realized only by the creation of a world government. |
| Every thoughtful, well-meaning and conscientious human being should assume in time of peace, the solemn and unconditional obligation not to participate in any war, for any reason or to lend support of any kind, whether direct or indirect. |
| The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. |
| Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. |
| Since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have to say that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps it is well that it should be. It many intimidate the human race into bringing order into it's international affairs, which without the pressure of fear, it would not do. |
| But could not our situation be compared to one of a menacing epidemic? People are unable to view this situation in its true light, for their eyes are blinded by passion. General fear and anxiety create hatred and aggressiveness. The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and persecuted as unpatriotic. |
| In our time the military mentality is still more dangerous than formerly because the offensive weapons have become much more powerful than the defensive ones. Therefore, it leads, by necessity, to preventive war. The general insecurity that goes hand in hand with this results in the sacrifice of the citizen's civil rights to the supposed welfare of the state. Political witch-hunting, controls of all sorts (e.g., control of teaching and research, of the press, and so forth) appear inevitable, and for this reason do not encounter that popular resistance, which, were it not for the military mentality, would provide protection. A reappraisal of all values gradually takes place insofar as everything that does not clearly serve the utopian ends is regarded and treated as inferior. |
| Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. |
| As long as armies exist, any serious conflict will lead to war. |
| It is characteristic of the military mentality that non-human factors are held essential, while the human being, his desires and thoughts, are considered as unimportant and secondary. |
| You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. |
| To concentrate on the problems and aspirations which all thinking men share creates a sense of comradeship that is eventually bound to reunite scholars and artists of all nations. |
| Warfare cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished. |
| The pioneers of a war less world are the youth who refuse military service. |
| A large part of history is replete with the struggle for human rights, an eternal struggle in which final victory can never be won. But to tire in that struggle would mean the ruin of society. |
| Only understanding for our neighbors, justice in our dealings, and willingness to help our fellow men can give human society permanence and assure security for the individual. |
| We scientists, whose tragic destination has been to help in making the methods of annihilation more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented. What task could possibly be more important to us? What social aim could be closer to our hearts? |
| Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust; we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. |
| The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. |
| Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to destroy part or all of the planet...But it is not necessary to imagine the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the grow ing scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is prevented it is likely to bring destruction on a scale never before held possible, and even now hardly conceived, and that little civilization would survive it. (1947) |
| The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man. |
| Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions. |
| Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them! |
| Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. |
| One does not make wars less likely by formulating rules of warfare, war cannot be humanized. It can only be eliminated. |
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