Albert Einstein Quotes on Time
Albert Einstein transformed the scientific understanding of time, but the quotes gathered here are reflections on time as it is lived rather than as it is measured. Even at eighteen, in a school essay, Einstein observed that a happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future, a sentiment he carried through life. Looking back over the scientific century he had helped to shape, he noted ruefully that few around 1900 could have foreseen how, fifty years on, humanity would know so much more and understand so much less. He met the end of his own life with the same composure with which he met its strangeness, judging simply that it was time to go and refusing to prolong life artificially. Drawn from his essays, letters, and reported words, these passages show time weighed as the medium of a human life.
Quotes
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Attributed to Albert Einstein:
“Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.”
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“A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”
Un homme heureux est trop content du présent pour trop se soucier de l'avenir. -
“From "Mes Projets d'Avenir", a French essay written at age 18 for a school exam (18 September 1896). The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein Vol. 1 (1987) Doc. 22.”
Un homme heureux est trop content du présent pour trop se soucier de l'avenir. -
“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 go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
1955 | [Words he used to refuse heart surgery the day before he passed away.] Einsteins Legacy: The Final Chapter, Albert Einstein dies soon after a blood vessel bursts near his heart. American Museum of Nat -
“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