How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
One picture is worth a thousand words.
I am not more gifted than anybody else. I am just more curious than the average person and I will not give up a problem until I have found the proper solution.
It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce the new ideas.
Growth comes through analogy; through seeing how things connect, rather than only seeing how they might be different.
Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.
To invent something, all you need is imagination and a big pile of junk.
I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
Organized people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.
Do you really believe that the moon isn’t there when nobody looks?
Why is it that no one understands me, and everybody likes me?
Life is a Mystery, not a problem waiting to be solved.
When Albert Einstein was asked what he would really like to know about the Universe he replied,’is it friendly?
No one does anything right in life, until they realize that they are making a mistake.
The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who – in their grudge against traditional religion as the “opium of the masses” – cannot hear the music of the spheres.
The woman who follows the crowd will usually believe that I said this.
Knowledge exists in two forms – lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.
I was very pleased with your kind letter. Until now I never dreamed of being something like a hero. But since you’ve given me the nomination I feel that I am one.
Conviction is a good motive, but a bad judge.
It is only men who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worth while.