I believe my theory of relativity to be true. But it will only be proved for certain in 1981, when I am dead.
I know little about nature and hardly anything about men.
How can he possibly be humble? He hasn’t done anything yet.
If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.
New frameworks are like climbing a mountain – the larger view encompasses rather than rejects the more restricted view.
It would be better if you begin to teach others only after you yourself have learned something.
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.
Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its horrors. They indoctrinate children with hatred. I would teach peace rather than war, love rather than hate.
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.
Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.
The daily struggle does not arise from a purpose or a program, but from an immediate need.
I agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. ‘I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.’ That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets.
Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion.
My internal and external life depend so much on the work of others that I must make an extreme effort to give as much as I receive.
For the most part, I do the thing which my own nature prompts me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it.
I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values.
It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped.
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.
Try first to be a man of value; success will follow.
In my opinion there is no other salvation for civilization and even for the human race than the creation of a world government with security on the basis of law. As long as there are sovereign states with their separate armaments and armament secrets, new world wars cannot be avoided.