The mastermind of the 19th century left us with many interpretations of the reality that we currently live in. Being one of my favorite philosophers (yes, philosophers), Einstein made some of the most widely accepted theories.
If you are still stunned by me calling him a philosopher, just think about it this way: this valuable scientist definitely was a genius for physics, but he also made some valuable contributions to modern philosophy.
Don’t believe me? Just scroll and read his quotes. You will be utterly amazed by his understanding of various concepts, and you will probably have some a-ha! moments while reading these.
Enjoy reading the compilation of the best Albert Einstein quotes that I could find online!
My Favorite Albert Einstein Quotes
1. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein
2. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ― Albert Einstein
3. “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”― Albert Einstein
4. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” ― Albert Einstein
5. “Make a lot of walks to get healthy and don’t read that much but save yourself some until you’re grown up.” ― Albert Einstein (Letter to his son Eduard Einstein in June 1918)
6. “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” ― Albert Einstein
7. “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.” ― Albert Einstein
8. “What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.” ― Albert Einstein
9. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ― Albert Einstein
10. “We all know that light travels faster than sound. That’s why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.” ― Albert Einstein
11. “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” ― Albert Einstein
12. “What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.” ― Albert Einstein
13. “Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren’t these the same questions as last year’s [physics] final exam? Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.” ― Albert Einstein
14. “Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” ― Albert Einstein
15.“Student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up.”
― Albert Einstein (Ideas and Opinions)
16. “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”― Albert Einstein
17. “Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.”― Albert Einstein
18. “A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.”― Albert Einstein
19. “Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”― Albert Einstein
20. “Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it.”― Albert Einstein
Inspirational Albert Einstein Quotes
1. “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ― Albert Einstein
2. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” ― Albert Einstein
3. “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” ― Albert Einstein
4. “You never fail until you stop trying.” ― Albert Einstein
5. “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut” ― Albert Einstein
6. “I refuse to make money out of my science. My laurel is not for sale like so many bales of cotton.” ― Albert Einstein
7. “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.” ― Albert Einstein
8. “The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” ― Albert Einstein
9. “In light of knowledge obtained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion, and final emergence into light—only those who have experienced it can understand that.” ― Albert Einstein (Notes on the Origin of the General Theory of Relativity”, 1934)
10. “I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.” ― Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein Quotes About Life
1. “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein
2. “I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.” ― Albert Einstein
3. “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” ― Albert Einstein
4. “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.” ― Albert Einstein
5. “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters” ― Albert Einstein
6. “When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.” ― Albert Einstein
7. “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” ― Albert Einstein
8. “I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” ― Albert Einstein
9. “However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.” ― Albert Einstein
10. “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” ― Albert Einstein
11. “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.” ― Albert Einstein
12. “From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.” ― Albert Einstein
13. “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.” ― Albert Einstein (Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)”
14. “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.” ― Albert Einstein
15. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”― Albert Einstein
16. “We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.” ― Albert Einstein
17. “No, this trick won’t work… How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? ” ― Albert Einstein
18. “Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”― Albert Einstein
19. “I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense… Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humour its due.” ― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
20. “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.”― Albert Einstein
See also: 40 Edgar Allan Poe Love Quotes To Make You Rethink Romance
Albert Einstein Quotes About Science
1. “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein
2. “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.” ― Albert Einstein
3. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” ― Albert Einstein
4. “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ― Albert Einstein
5. “Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.” ― Albert Einstein
6. “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein (The World As I See It)
7. “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.” ― Albert Einstein
8. “Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.” ― Albert Einstein
9. “In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside.” ― Albert Einstein
10. “Time is an illusion.” ― Albert Einstein
11. Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means. ― Albert Einstein
12. How can it be that mathematics, being, after all, a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things? ― Albert Einstein
13. “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”― Albert Einstein
14. “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking” ― Albert Einstein
15. “All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.” ― Albert Einstein
16. “I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?”― Albert Einstein
(From Cosmic Religion: with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 1931)
17. “Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it. In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long day’s work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations. … It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man’s blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.” ― Albert Einstein (Speech to students at the California Institute of Technology, in “Einstein Sees Lack in Applying Science”, The New York Times, 16 February 1931)
18. “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.” ― Albert Einstein (Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words)
19. “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”― Albert Einstein
20. “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”― Albert Einstein
Motivational Quotes By Albert Einstein
1. “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” ― Albert Einstein
2. “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” ― Albert Einstein
3. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. ― Albert Einstein (“Old Man’s Advice to Youth: ‘Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'” LIFE Magazine)
4.” I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am.” ― Albert Einstein
5. “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” ― Albert Einstein
6. “The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.” ― Albert Einstein
7. “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” ― Albert Einstein
8. “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” ― Albert Einstein
9. “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” ― Albert Einstein
10. “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”― Albert Einstein
See also: 110 Anais Nin Quotes On Being Fierce And Unapologetic
Wise And Philosophical Albert Einstein Quotes
1. “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” ― Albert Einstein
2. “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein
3. “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ― Albert Einstein
4. “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” ― Albert Einstein
5. “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” ― Albert Einstein
6. “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” ― Albert Einstein
7. “Love is a better master than duty.” ― Albert Einstein
8. “Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” ― Albert Einstein
9. “Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it’s beauty.” ― Albert Einstein
10. “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” ― Albert Einstein
11. “It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher. Why then should it not be the right thing for the physicist to let the philosopher do the philosophizing? Such might indeed be the right thing to do at a time when the physicist believes he has at his disposal a rigid system of fundamental laws which are so well established that waves of doubt can’t reach them; but it cannot be right at a time when the very foundations of physics itself have become problematic as they are now. At a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a newer and more solid foundation, the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of theoretical foundations; for he himself knows best and feels more surely where the shoe pinches. In looking for a new foundation, he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified, and are necessities.” ― Albert Einstein ( “Physics and Reality” in the Journal of the Franklin Institute)
12. “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.” ― Albert Einstein
13. “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” ― Albert Einstein
14. “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”― Albert Einstein
15. “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”― Albert Einstein
16. “Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury – to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.” ― Albert Einstein
17. “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” ― Albert Einstein
18. “The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.” ― Albert Einstein
19. “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”― Albert Einstein
20. “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.”― Albert Einstein
21. “Everyone must become their own person, however frightful that may be.”― Albert Einstein
22. “A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.”― Albert Einstein
23. “What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”― Albert Einstein
24. “To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.”― Albert Einstein
25. “Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”― Albert Einstein
26. “One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”― Albert Einstein
27. “Play is the highest form of research.”― Albert Einstein
28. “As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”― Albert Einstein
29. “Earth is the insane asylum of the universe.”― Albert Einstein
30. “The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”― Albert Einstein
Final Word
I am sure that these quotes have made a unique stamp on your ways of thinking. That’s why I have decided to include these particular quotes, since I find them exceptionally valuable.
I advise that you think about some of these quotes and discuss them with your friends, family and colleagues. If nothing, it would be useful if you think about them by yourself. I am sure that you will find some universal values in every and each one of them.
Hope that you have enjoyed reading them!
Read next: 80 Most Famous Jordan Peterson Quotes To Blow Your Mind
