Wisdom quotes by Albert Einstein

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Quotes by Albert Einstein in Wisdom category:

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"I don't know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with -- stone clubs."
"The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while."
"I don't know what will be used in the next world war, but the 4th will be fought with stones."
"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary."
"By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what on has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action."
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
"To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms--this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men."
"All our thoughts and concepts are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only in reference to these sense-experiences. On the other hand, however, they are products of the spontaneous activity of our minds; they are thus in no wise logical consequences of the contents of these sense-experiences. If, therefore, we wish to grasp the essence of a complex of abstract notions we must for the one part investigate the mutual relationships between the concepts and the assertions made about them; for the other, we must investigate how they are related to the experiences."
"Never regard study as a duty but as an 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 works belong."
"Those people have seen _something_. What it is I do not know and I can not care to know. (on flying saucers)"
"Before God we are equally wise--and equally foolish."
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people."
"In light of knowledge attained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alterations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it."
"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."
"If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self ... so the hell with it ... I will continue to be unconcerned about it, which surely has the advantage that I'm left in peace by many a fop who would otherwise come to see me."
"There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there."
"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 my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
"Of what significance is one's one existence, one is basically unaware. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life? The bitter and the sweet come from outside. The hard from within, from one's own efforts. For the most part I do what my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn such respect and love for it."
"The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown."
"We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us."
"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community."
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish."
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
"How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot."
"The physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for he himself knows best and feels most surely where the shoe pinches.... he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified... The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
"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."
"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."
"I don't know how man will fight World War III, but I do know how they will fight World War IV; with sticks and stones."
"The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. So to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that which is impenetretrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius had its limits."
"The important things are always simple."
"The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant."
"Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible."
"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
"Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools."