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Einstein’s great strength as a theorist was that he had a keener ability than other scientists to come up with what he called “the general postulates and principles which serve as the starting point.”
“The scientist has to worm these general principles out of nature by discerning, when looking at complexes of empirical facts, certain general features.”
“I believe that, in order to make any real progress, one would again have to find a general principle wrested from Nature.”
“The development of the general theory of relativity introduced Einstein to the power of abstract mathematical formalisms, notably that of tensor calculus,”
“Nature is pleased with simplicity.”
not merely flying away from us, but instead, the entire metric of space, or the fabric of the cosmos, is expanding.
“Theoretical thinking is rich in imagination.”7
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
“What do you think of Adolf Hitler?” Einstein replied, “He is living on the empty stomach of Germany. As soon as economic conditions improve, he will no longer be important.”
Chaplin memorably (and accurately) noted, “They cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.”52
how science had not yet been harnessed to do more good than harm. During war it gave people “the means to poison and mutilate one another,” and in peacetime it “has made our lives hurried and uncertain.” Instead of being a liberating force, “it has enslaved men to machines” by making them work “long wearisome hours mostly without joy in their labor.” Concern for making life better for ordinary humans must be the chief object of science. “Never forget this when you are pondering over your diagrams and equations!”
“Einstein’s personality, for no clear reason, triggers outbursts of a kind of mass hysteria,”
“Liberty is the necessary foundation for the development of all true values.”
“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.”
“I’m enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.
To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness.
“What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos,”
“The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
“A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills,”
“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.”
Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”
“One feels the insignificance of the individual,” he wrote, “and it makes one happy.”
“There is no power on earth from which we should be prepared to accept an order to kill,”
Being Einstein,
For a scientist, altering your doctrines when the facts change is not a sign of weakness.
“The monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind,”
“Striving for social justice is the most valuable thing to do in life.”
By measuring or observing the system, the observer causes the wave function to collapse and one distinct position or state to snap into place.
“His tenacity in sticking to a problem for years, in returning to the problem again and again—this is the characteristic feature of Einstein’s genius,”
Einstein’s quest was driven by his intuition that mathematical simplicity, an attribute he never fully defined though he felt he knew it when he saw it, was a feature of nature’s handiwork.
“It is open to every man to choose the direction of his striving,” he explained, “and every man may take comfort from the fine saying that the search for truth is more precious than its possession.”
“Politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.”
“A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different things it relates, and the more expanded its area of applicability,”
Einstein’s brilliance sprang from being a rebel and nonconformist who recoiled at any attempt to restrain his free expression.
“People acquiesce without resistance and align themselves with the forces for evil.”1
“Every reasonable person must strive to promote moderation and a more objective judgment.”3
“The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness.”
the ability to rise above mere existence by sacrificing one’s self through the years for an impersonal goal.”
“I must seem like an ostrich who forever buries its head in the relativistic sand in order not to face the evil quanta,”
For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.”
“I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
“Yet no other man was more modest in the possession of the power that is knowledge, more sure that power without wisdom is deadly.”
“I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.”
“Curiosity has its own reason for existing,” he once explained. “One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.”
“It is a sudden illumination, almost a rapture. Later, to be sure, intelligence analyzes and experiments confirm or invalidate the intuition. But initially there is a great forward leap of the imagination.”16
“In building a theory, his approach had something in common with that of an artist,”
“He would aim for simplicity and beauty, and beauty for him was, after all, essentially simplicity.”18
Perhaps the most important aspect of his personality was his willingness to be a nonconformist.
