"There remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion"
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
"Where there is love there is no question."
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe , a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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 the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."
"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books . It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranges and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
"The search for truth is more precious than its possession."
"Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not."
"Human beings, vegetables, or comic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player."
"The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self."
"The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it."
"It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped."
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose we know not, though sometimes sense it. But we know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."
"When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter."
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
"I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."
"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
"People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a [person] does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses their intelligence."
"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
"Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice."
"We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility."
"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. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiratation of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God"
"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service."
