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爱因斯坦心灵鸡汤
2007.06.13
莫扎特不是小猪
每次我提到莫扎特时,我女儿就说:莫扎特是小猪。因为她看的某个愚蠢的动画片上莫扎特就是个小猪。
同样道理,我们每次提到爱因斯坦时,大多数人就认为他是个心不在焉的糟老头,或者是个科学奇人或怪人。诺贝尔奖获得者Harold Kroto几年前在人民大会堂演讲时,就告诫说:如果我们记住的是Einstein老年的形象,而不是他风华正茂,1905年26岁时就写出划时代的那些论文的形象的话,我们就无法让年轻人相信,科学家和发明家是比任何电影明星和艺术家更有魅力,精神上和财富上都更富有的值得仿效的人。Kroto把Einstein年轻时的照片和英俊的Tom Cruise的照片放在一起,然后问:你能告诉我哪一个更帅吗?他把年轻的和老年的Einstein的照片放在一起,然后说,大家应该记住是年轻的那个Einstein做出了划时代的科学贡献,而不是相反。
莫扎特是最伟大的音乐家,而不是小猪。爱因斯坦是伟大的科学家和人文主义者,而不是心不在焉的科学怪人。爱因斯坦还是个化学家。
我的《爱因斯坦是个化学家》博文:http://www.sciencenet.cn/blog/user_content.aspx?id=341
我的《冷战时期自由、真实的爱因斯坦及其它》博文:http://www.sciencenet.cn/blog/user_content.aspx?id=336
Young Einstein Tom Cruise Old Einstein
爱因斯坦心灵鸡汤
我每次学习Einstein语录时,都有新的感受。当我比较迷茫的时候,我就总会在Einstein语录中找到想要的答案。所以,Einstein语录是我的心灵鸡汤。
比如,要不要乱发文章?Einstein语录第76条说:I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy. 爱因斯坦最烦的事,当然就不干了。
比如,是否要随大流,屈服于强权?Einstein语录第45条说:Force always attracts men of low morality. 当然不能降低自己的道德水准。
比如,公式推不出来怎么办?Einstein语录第49条说:God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically. 那就不要推公式,直接用实验和经验方法解决问题。
比如,受到庸人的排挤和打压怎么办?Einstein语录第53条说:Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. 第283条又说:Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. 那就走自己的路,让庸人去折腾吧。
比如,为什么专注于科学比热衷政治重要性不同?Einstein语录第158条说:Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity. 所以,立功有难度,那就立言吧。
这些语录融会贯通了,再用自己的语言说给学生听,就变成自己的语录了。比如,不知道我初一的什么时候给一个同学提到笨鸟先飞这个成语,于是该同学就在作文中写道:正如王鸿飞同学所说,笨鸟先飞,于是我端正了自己的学习态度,云云。不知道我是笨鸟,还是他以为我发明了笨鸟先飞。
关键是要象雷锋同志学习毛主席语录一样,对这些语录要经常揣摩,结合自己的经验和教训,内化到自己的科学革命实践中去。否则只会是打着红旗反红旗,不伦不类。
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Quoteopia上查到的近300条Einstein语录:http://www.quoteopia.com/famous.php?quotesby=alberteinstein
1. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
2. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
3. 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.
4. A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
5. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
6. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
7. A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
8. After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well.
9. All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
10. All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike-and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
11. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
12. All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.
13. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
14. All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them.
15. All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.
16. An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
17. An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information.
18. Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
19. Any 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.
20. 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.
21. Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
22. Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
23. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
24. As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
25. 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.
26. Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
27. But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.
28. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
29. 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.
30. Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
31. Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.
32. Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
33. Do you believe in immortality? No, and one life is enough for me.
34. During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.
35. 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.
36. Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
37. Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
38. Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
39. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance.
40. Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.
41. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
42. Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
43. Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
44. 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.
45. Force always attracts men of low morality.
46. Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.
47. Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.
48. God always takes the simplest way.
49. God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
50. God does not play dice.
51. God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
52. Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
53. Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
54. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
55. He who joyfully marches 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.
56. 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.
57. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!
58. 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.
59. 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.
60. How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
61. Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
62. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the of the inquiring constructive mind.
63. I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
64. 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.
65. 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.
66. I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.
67. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
68. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
69. I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.
70. 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.
71. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
72. 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.
73. I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
74. I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!
75. I have just got a new theory of eternity.
76. I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
77. I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
78. I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
79. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
80. I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.
81. I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
82. I made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification-the danger that the Germans would make them.
83. I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research.
84. I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
85. I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
86. I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.
87. I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
88. I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.
89. I want to know God's thoughts... the rest are details.
90. If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
91. If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
92. 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.
93. If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
94. If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.
95. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
96. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
97. If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
98. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
99. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
100. 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.
101. In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
102. Information is not knowledge.
103. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
104. Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
105. Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
106. It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
107. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
108. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
109. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
110. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
111. It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education is a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.
112. It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
113. It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
114. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
115. It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
116. 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.
117. It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.
118. It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
119. Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
120. Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will.
121. Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
122. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
123. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
124. Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
125. Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous.
126. Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
127. Love is a better teacher than duty.
128. Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
129. Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.
130. Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
131. Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
132. Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
133. 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.
134. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
135. Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
136. Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
137. Never lose a holy curiosity.
138. Never regard study as a 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.
139. Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
140. No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
141. No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
142. Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
143. Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized.
144. Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
145. 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.
146. On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.
147. Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
148. 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.
149. 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.
150. Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
151. 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.
152. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
153. 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.
154. Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
155. People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
156. Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.
157. Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
158. Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
159. 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 every one, best both for the body and the mind.
160. Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
161. Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
162. Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like anhour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.THAT'S relativity.
163. Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice.
164. 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.
165. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
166. Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
167. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
168. Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.
169. Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
170. Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men.
171. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
172. Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
173. That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
174. The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
175. 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.
176. The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
177. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
178. The environment is everything that isn't me.
179. The faster you go, the shorter you are.
180. The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
181. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
182. The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
183. 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.
184. The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
185. The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
186. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
187. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
188. The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
189. The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
190. The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
191. The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.
192. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
193. The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
194. The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
195. The only real valuable thing is intuition.
196. The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
197. The only source of knowledge is experience.
198. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
199. The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed.
200. The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service.
201. The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
202. The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
203. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
204. The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man.
205. The release of atom 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.
206. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
207. The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism.
208. The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
209. The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
210. 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.
211. The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
212. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
213. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
214. The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
215. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
216. The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
217. 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.
218. The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
219. 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.
220. There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
221. 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.
222. There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation.
223. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.
224. Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
225. Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.
226. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty... this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
227. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization.
228. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
229. To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
230. 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.
231. True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
232. True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.
233. Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
234. Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
235. Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
236. We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
237. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
238. We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself.
239. We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.
240. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
241. We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
242. Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
243. When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
244. 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.
245. When the solution is simple, God is answering.
246. 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.
247. Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.
248. Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
249. Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
250. 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.
251. Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
252. You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one.
253. You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
254. You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
255. 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.
256. You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it.
257. 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.
258. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
259. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
260. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.
261. The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
262. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their 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 rank of devoutly religious men.
263. 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.
264. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.
265. 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.
266. Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
267. Imagination is more important than knowledge...
268. Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
269. The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
270. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
271. The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
272. To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
273. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
274. Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
275. Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
276. Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
277. It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
278. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.
279. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
280. The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
281. At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
282. If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
283. Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
284. 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.
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