Foma Einstein profoundly changed how we think about space and time. In 1905, Einstein got his Ph.D and wrote a paper on the topic now called the special theory of relativity.
But what Einstein is also know is for saying many fascinating quotes.
Foma Einstein Quotes - Science
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science."
"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."
"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."
"When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter."
"For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe."
"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."
"I don't believe in mathematics."
"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
"I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research."
Foma Einstein Quotes - Religion
"God does not play dice with the universe."
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
"I want to know God's thoughts...the rest are details."
"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."
"Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not."
"Strange is our situation here upon this earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose."
"There remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion."
"Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player."
"Do you believe in immortality? No, and one life is enough for me."
"Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe."
"I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice."
"When the solution is simple, God is answering."
Foma Einstein Quotes - Humanity
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
"The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable receiving."
"Try not to be a person of success, but rather a person of virtue."
"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."
"So long as there are men there will be wars."
"Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind."
"I believe in standardizing automobiles, not human beings."
"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
"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."
"It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; 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."
"America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice."
"Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age."
Foma Einstein Quotes - Humorous
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."
"The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it."
When his wife asked him to change clothes to meet the German Ambassador: "they want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, open my closet and show them my suits."
"With fame, I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon."
Foma Einstein Quotes - Education
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty."
"Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach."
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it."
"We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know."
"You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity...No we must not You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball."
"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who read too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
Foma Einstein Quotes - General
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
"People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born." in a letter to Otto Juliusburger;
"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."
"We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility."
"Where there is love there is no question."
"I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."
"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service."
"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
"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 search for truth is more precious than its possession."
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
"Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?"
"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."
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning."
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all 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."
"I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple."
"Truth is what stands the test of experience."
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
"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."
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a [person] does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses their intelligence."
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose we know not, though sometimes sense it. But we know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."
"To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window."
"I love to travel, But hate to arrive."
"Politics is more difficult than physics."
"I hate crowds and making speeches. I hate facing cameras and having to answer to a crossfire of questions. Why popular fancy should seize upon me, a scientist, dealing in abstract things and happy if left alone, is a manifestation of mass psychology that is beyond me."
"I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious."
"Lasting harmony with a woman (was) an undertaking in which I twice failed rather disgracefully."
"A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."
"If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
"The ideals that have lighted my way and time after time have give me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth."
"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?"
These are a few of our favorite Foma Einstein quotes.
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."
"Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them."
"It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed."
"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."
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means."
"The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
"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."
"Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift."
"It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service."
"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
"As punishment for my contempt for authority, Fate has made me an authority myself."
"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."
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe , a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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 the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty...We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."
"We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility."
"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books . It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranges and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
"The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving."
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's relativity."
"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."
"I admit that thoughts influence the body."
"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."
"On the big Bang theory: "For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe."
"MacMillan has this particular quote simply as "God doesn't play dice." and notes that it is often quoted as doesn't play dice with the universe".
"He who finds though that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted great grace. He who, in addition, experiences the recognition, sympathy, and help of the best minds of his times, had been given almost more happiness than one man can bear."
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."
"A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind."
"The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives."
"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent or absorbing positive knowledge."
"I am content in my later years. I have kept my good humor and take neither myself nor the next person seriously."
Foma Einstein Quotes - Last Words
When Einstein died on April 18, 1955 he left a piece of writing ending in an unfinished sentence.
These were his last words:
"In essence, the conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semi religious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed. Despite this knowledge, statesmen in responsible positions on both sides continue to employ the well-known technique of seeking to intimidate and demoralize the opponent by marshaling superior military strength. They do so even though such a policy entails the risk of war and doom. Not one statesman in a position of responsibility has dared to pursue the only course that holds out any promise of peace, the course of supranational security, since for a statesman to follow such a course would be tantamount to political suicide. Political passions, once they have been fanned into flame, exact their victims ... "
Foma Einstein left to us over 500 different quotes, he was really EINSTEIN with IQ of 160
R.I.P