Albert Einstein Quotes on God
Albert Einstein wrote frequently about God, and the quotes gathered here show what he did and did not mean by the word. Einstein's God was not a personal deity who answers prayers or intervenes in events but the lawful order of the cosmos itself; to understand physics, he said, was to want to know His thoughts. His famous resistance to quantum indeterminacy, the conviction that God does not play dice, was an expression of his faith in an underlying rational order. Several of his most quoted remarks on God and religion appear here marked as attributed, since their wording is debated. Drawn from his letters, essays, and reported conversations, these passages present a thinker who used religious language to express awe at the comprehensibility and lawfulness of nature.
Quotes
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Attributed to Albert Einstein:
“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
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Attributed to Albert Einstein:
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
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“Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...?”
Lieber Habicht! / Es herrscht ein weihevolles Stillschweigen zwischen uns, so daß es mir fast wie eine sündige Entweihung vorkommt, wenn ich es jetzt durch ein wenig bedeutsames Gepappel unterbreche... / Was machen Sie denn, Sie eingefrorener Walfisch, Sie getrocknetes, eingebüchstes Stück Seele...? -
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods .”
Essay to Leo Baeck(1953) | Ideas and Opinions -
“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.”
Einstein and the Poet(1983) | p. 142 -
“I want to know how God created this world. I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.”
Einstein and Religion(1999) | As quoted in "A Talk with Einstein" in The Listener 54 (1955) p. 123 -
“It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses "telepathic" methods... is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.”
Albert Einstein: The Human Side(1979) | Letter to Cornel Lanczos (21 March 1942), p. 68 -
“My God may not be your idea of God, but one thing I know of my God — he makes me a humanitarian. I am a proud Jew because we gave the world the Bible and the story of Joseph.”
Einstein and the Poet(1983) | p. 106