The school has always been the most important means of transferring the wealth of tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even higher degree than in former times, for through modern development of economic life, the family.
The main task of the spirit is to free man from his ego.
The concept of marriage must have been thought up by an unimaginative pig.
It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction in the name of which they can hate one another. Once it was religion. Now it is the State.
There is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of the good cause.
Do not grow old, no matter how long you live.
A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it.
Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable and is always daydreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interests of all if he were removed from school immediately.
Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as something that is considered to be independent of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of physical reality.
Mere thinking cannot reveal to us the highest purpose.
Knowledge is realizing that the street is one way; wisdom is looking in both directions anyway.
Time does not exist – we invented it.
Intelligent life on other planets? I’m not even sure there is on earth!
Academic chairs are many, but wise and noble teachers are few; lecture-rooms are numerous and large, but the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small.
Time is relative; its only worth depends upon what we do as it is passing.
I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books.
We are all very ignorant. What happens is that not all ignore the same things.
I would teach peace rather than war, love rather than hate.
Imagination without knowledge may create beautiful things, knowledge without imagination can create only perfect ones.