A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.

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

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

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

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

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

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

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.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilisation ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.

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

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

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

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself. Aphorism for a friend (18 September 1930).

As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.

While religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow. men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection. There are pessimists who hold that such a state of affairs is necessarily inherent in human nature; it is those who propound such views that are the enemies of true religion, for they imply thereby that religious teachings are utopian ideals and unsuited to afford guidance in human affairs. The study of the social patterns in certain so-called primitive cultures, however, seems to have made it sufficiently evident that such a defeatist view is wholly unwarranted.

My theory is that music is good, it's the only religion that delivers the goods. And anybody who wants to hear any kind of music is entitled to hear that music because it's good for you – it makes you feel good. If you like it, go for it. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean anything – it's a matter of personal taste.

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre. 1977