8 October 2013 - ALBERT EINSTEIN - Great Quotes

ALBERT EINSTEIN

- Great Quotes -

G'day guys,

Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.

During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.
 

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the 

Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East, and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.
 

Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.

Here are some of his famous quotes:

·  "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

·  "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

·  "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."

·  "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

·  "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

·  "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

·  "The only real valuable thing is intuition."

·  "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."

·  "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."

·  "God is subtle but he is not malicious."

·  "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."

·  "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

·  "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

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

·  "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

·  "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

·  "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."

·  "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

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

·  "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."

·  "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

  

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

·  "God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."

·  "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

·  "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

·  "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

·  "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."

·  "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

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

·  "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

·  "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

·  "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."

·  "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."

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

·  "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

·  "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

·  "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

 

 "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."

·  "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

·  "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."

·  "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"

·  "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?"

·  "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."

·  "Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."

·  "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

·  "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

·  "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."

·  "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

·  "The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." 

·  "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

·  "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

·  "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."

Clancy's comment: Some folks are born with extraordinary gifts. 

Pax vobiscum, Mr. Einstein.

I'm ...

Think about this!