1.“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
2.“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt.”
3.“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”
4.“I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.”
5.“Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
6.“The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.”
7.“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”
8.“He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”
9.“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”
10.“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
11.“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.”
12.“The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.”
13.“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
14.“It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.”
15.“A question that sometimes drives me hazy — am I or are the others crazy?”
16.“It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.”
17.“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
18.“The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.”
19.“Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”
20.“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.”
21.“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
22.“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
23.“I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”
24.“Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.”
25.“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”
26.“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
27.“Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.”
28.“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
29.“We should take care not to make the intellect our god it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”
30.“You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.”
31.“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain, children, all our lives.”
32.“It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
33.“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.”
34.“Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.”
35.“Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life.”
36.“Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
37.“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
38.“There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.”
39.“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
40.“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
41.“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person.”
42.“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
43.“I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.”
44.“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.”
45.“That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”
46.“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
47.“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
48.“He who joyfully marches to music 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.”
49.“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
50.“It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.”
51.“Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”
52.“Hail to the man who went through life always helping others, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien.”
53.“I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
54.“The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.”
55.“One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.”
56.“We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”
57.“The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.”
58.“I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.”
59.“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
60.“Invention is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.”
61.“I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.”
62.“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
63.“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.”