Albert Einstein Quotes on Knowledge
Albert Einstein (1879–1955), whose 1905 papers on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity restructured early-twentieth-century physics, produced over the following half-century an extensive body of philosophical writing on the methodological and epistemological foundations of physical science. The distinction between "constructive" theories (which build up complex phenomena from simple model elements) and "principle" theories (which derive consequences from high-level postulates such as the constancy of the speed of light) supplies the explicit framework of the 1919 essay What Is the Theory of Relativity?, and the long debate with Bohr over the completeness of quantum mechanics develops the corresponding case for a realist conception of physical knowledge that the Copenhagen interpretation rejected.
Quotes
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“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.”
What Life Means to Einstein, 1929 interview -
Attributed to Albert Einstein:
“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
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“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. -
Attributed to Albert Einstein:
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
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“❝Everything should be made simple as possible but no simpler.❞”
Repeated throughout his life, see: Quote Investigator -
“Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit.”
Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth. -
“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...?”
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...? | Opening of a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht in which he describes his four revolutionary Annus Mirabilis papers (18 or 25 May 1905 -
“Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.”
1940s | "Only Then Shall We Find Courage", New York Times Magazine (23 June 1946). -
“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 -
“Who would have thought around 1900 that in fifty years time we would know so much more and understand so much less.”
Albert Einstein: A guide for the perplexed(1979) | From Albert Einstein and the Cosmic World Order , by C. Lanczos (Wiley, New York, 1956) -
“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 -
“[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”
1920s | In response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test: New York Times (18 May 1921); Einstein: His Life and Times (1947) Philipp Frank, p. 185; Einstein, A Life (1996) by Denis -
“When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
1940s | Cited as conversation between Einstein and János Plesch in János : The Story of a Doctor (1947), by János Plesch, translated by Edward FitzGerald -
“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
1950s | Letter to Hans Muehsam (9 July 1951), Einstein Archives 38-408, quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010) by Alice Calaprice, p. 404 -
“What is significant in one's own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?”
Out of My Later Years(1950) | Ch. 2 "Self-Portrait" (1936), p. 5 -
“Hail to the man who went through life always helping others, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien. Such is the stuff of which the great moral leaders are made.”
Essay to Leo Baeck(1953) | The New Quotable Einstein variant translation from Ideas and Opinions : "I salute the man who is going through life always helpful, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien -
“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