One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.

Action

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

Apathy

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.

Change

Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes -- goodwill among men and peace on earth.

Common Sense

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Conformity

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

Cooperation

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

Creativity

The legs are the wheels of creativity.

Death and Dying

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Education

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Endurance

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.

Faith

To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty... this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

Goals

If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.

Human Nature

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

Ideas

They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Imagination

In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts.

Influence

At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on.

Intelligence and Intellectuals

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.

Language

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

Loneliness

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

Mastery

To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.

Mind

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.

Nature

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

Opinions

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Peace

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.

Praise

The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.

Problems

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.

Relativity

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.

Right and Rightness

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.

Service

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule...

Simplicity

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

Solitude

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.

Stupidity

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Teachers and Teaching

The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?

Theory

It is theory that decides what can be observed.

Truth

All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.

Value

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

World

To understand the world one must not be worrying about one's self.