170+ Inspirational Albert Einstein Quotes to Ignite Genius, Curiosity, and Imagination

Updated 2024/12/06

March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955
German-born Jew
Physicist
Revolutionized the world of physics by proposing the theory of relativity

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”
“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
“We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
“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.”
“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”
“The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.”
“The environment is everything that isn’t me.”
“Before God we are all equally wise—and equally foolish.”
“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.”
“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”
“True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
“Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God.”
“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.”
“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”
“In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.”
“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
“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.”
“I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.”
“God does not play dice.”
“Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
“Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.”
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
“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.”
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”
“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
“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.”
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
“I have just got a new theory of eternity.”
“We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”
“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”
“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
“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.”
“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
“The only source of knowledge is experience.”
“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
“Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.”
“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
“I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”
“We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.”
“One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
“The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
“The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.”
“God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.”
“Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.”
“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”
“I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.”
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“Never lose a holy curiosity.”
“I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
“Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.”
“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.”
“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
“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.”
“When the solution is simple, God is answering.”
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
“The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.”
“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.”
“All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.”
“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”
“I want to know all God’s thoughts; all the rest are just details.”
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”
“It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.”
“Information is not knowledge.”
“To the Master’s honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton’s ground.”
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
“The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.”
“The faster you go, the shorter you are.”
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.”
“Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.”
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”
“God always takes the simplest way.”
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
“You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.”
“Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?”
“Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”
“The man of science is a poor philosopher.”
“I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.”
“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
“It was the experience of mystery—even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion.”
“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.”
“There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.”
“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever—this is a somewhat new kind of religion.”
“Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.”
“We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”
“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.”
“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
“Love is a better teacher than duty.”
“I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.”
“That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”
“You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.”
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
“I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.”
“The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.”
“True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.”
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.”
“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.”
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
“I love to travel, but hate to arrive.”
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I hate them!”
“It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
“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.”
“Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.”
“Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.”
“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.”
“Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.”
“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.”
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”
“Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.”
“As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It is only to the individual that a soul is given.”
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
“Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.”
“Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.”
“It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.”
“I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
“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.”
“There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.”
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
“Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.”
“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.”
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
“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.”
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
“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.”
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
“Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
“Force always attracts men of low morality.”
“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
“The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.”