Albert Einstein Quotes on Mind
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist whose work revolutionized the scientific understanding of space, time, energy, and matter. This page collects quotes attributed to Albert Einstein on the topic of mind, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
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 -
“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). -
“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 -
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.”
1930s | Letter to Phyllis Wright (January 24, 1936), published in Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein's Letters to and from Children (Prometheus Books, 2002), p. 129 -
“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 -
“A truly rational theory would allow us to deduce the elementary particles (electron, etc.) and not be forced to state them a priori.”
1950s | Letter to Michele Besso (10 September 1952), Letter n°190, Correspondance, 1903-1955 (1972), by Pierre Speziali and Michele Angelo Besso -
“Great moral teachers of humanity were, in a certain sense, geniuses in the art of living more than in the art of thinking.”
1954 | Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954), p. 12. -
“Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells man his purpose in this life.”
Einstein and the Poet(1983) | p. 103