The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been truth, goodness, and beauty.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.

The only thing I did was this: in long intervals I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to me so bad and unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.

I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.

I believe in intuition and inspiration. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.

The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

A little knowledge is dangerous. So is a lot.

One flower is beautiful, a surfeit of flowers is vulgar.

The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Each of us has to do his little bit toward transforming this spirit of the times.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.

I, an old man, greet you Japanese schoolchildren from afar and hope that your generation may some day put mine to shame.

The destiny of civilized humanity depends more than ever on the moral forces it is capable of generating.

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.

As for the search for truth, I know from my own painful searching, with its many blind alleys, how hard it is to take a reliable step, be it ever so small, towards the understanding of that which is truly important.

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal value.

On receiving Lord & Taylor Award: It gives me great pleasure, indeed, to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and full in feeling.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

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.

Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else, unless it is an enemy.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

At our age, the devil doesn’t give you much time off!

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

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.

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way, but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.

The eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.

I am neither a German citizen, nor do I believe in anything that can be described as a ‘Jewish faith.’ But I am a Jew and glad to belong to the Jewish people, though I do not regard it in any way as chosen.

My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women.