The most important tool of the theoretical physicist is his wastebasket.
Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.
Although I tried to be universal in thought, I am European by instinct and inclination.
This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.
Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.
It is best, it seems to me, to separate one’s inner striving from one’s trade as far as possible. It is not good when one’s daily break is tied to God’s special blessing.
The height of stupidity is most clearly demonstrated by the individual who ridicules something he knows nothing about.
Strange is our situation here upon earth.
The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working. One is tempted to stop and listen to it. The only thing is to turn away and go on working. Work. There is nothing else.
Intelligence and genius.
The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope – we must hope – that man’s own creation, man’s own genius, will not destroy him.
The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us that the human race is poor in independent and creative imagination.
The creative scientist studies nature with the rapt gaze of the lover, and is guided as often by aesthetics as by rational considerations in guessing how nature works.
No scientist thinks in formulae.
This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton. Refering to James Clerk Maxwell’s contributions to physics.
My position concerning God is that of an agnostic.
Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality.
But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.
I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself. The objective of avoiding total destruction must have priority over any other objective.
A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt about the significance of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation.