Albert Einstein Quotes: 702 Quotes that Inspire the Wonder of the Universe

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”

Albert Einstein

Statement on the Atomic Bomb to Raymond Swing, before 1 October 1945, as reported in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 176, no. 5 (November 1945), in Einstein on Politics, p. 373
1940s

Problem

“Development of Western Science is based on two great achievements, the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (Renaissance). In my opinion one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.”

Albert Einstein

Letter to J.S. Switzer (23 April 1953), quoted in The Scientific Revolution: a Hstoriographical Inquiry By H. Floris Cohen (1994), p. 234 http://books.google.com/books?id=wu8b2NAqnb0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA234#v=onepage&q&f=false, and also partly quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein edited by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 405 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA405#v=onepage&q&f=false
1950s

Science

“Every man knows that in his work he does best and accomplishes most when he has attained a proficiency that enables him to work intuitively. That is, there are things which we come to know so well that we do not know how we know them. So it seems to me in matters of principle. Perhaps we live best and do things best when we are not too conscious of how and why we do them.”

Albert Einstein

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)

“A man who is convinced of the truth of his religion is indeed never tolerant. At the least, he is to feel pity for the adherent of another religion but usually it does not stop there. The faithful adherent of a religion will try first of all to convince those that believe in another religion and usually he goes on to hatred if he is not successful. However, hatred then leads to persecution when the might of the majority is behind it.
In the case of a Christian clergyman, the tragic-comical is found in this: that the Christian religion demands love from the faithful, even love for the enemy. This demand, because it is indeed superhuman, he is unable to fulfill. Thus intolerance and hatred ring through the oily words of the clergyman. The love, which on the Christian side is the basis for the conciliatory attempt towards Judaism is the same as the love of a child for a cake. That means that it contains the hope that the object of the love will be eaten up…”

Albert Einstein

Letter to Rabbi Solomon Goldman of Chicago's Anshe Emet Congregation, p. 51
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein's God (1997)

Love , Truth , Faith , Religion

“The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”

Albert Einstein

1910s, Principles of Research (1918)

Lovers , Effort , Heart

“Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality.”

Albert Einstein

Miscellaneous http://books.google.com/books?id=cvlOAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Everyone+sits+in+the+prison+of+his+own+ideas+he+must+burst+it+open+and+that+in+his+youth+and+so+try+to+test+his+ideas+on+reality%22&pg=PA104#v=onepage, Cosmic Religion, p. 104 (1931)
1930s

Youth , Idea , Reality

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”

Albert Einstein

A variation on a quotation of Alexander Pope, attributed to Einstein in various recent sources, such as Marvin Minsky's The Emotion Machine (2006), p. 176 http://books.google.com/books?id=OqbMnWDKIJ4C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA176#v=onepage&q&f=false, and at the start of the 2006 pilot episode of the television series Eureka. The oldest published source located attributing this to Einstein is the 2004 book Strategic Investment: Real Options and Games by Han T. J. Smit and Lenos Trigeorgis, p. 429 http://books.google.com/books?id=pN41ZtNoqBEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA429#v=onepage&q&f=false, and before that it was attributed to him on the internet, the earliest example found being this post from 19 May 1995 http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.physhare/msg/ef186aec3bf66ba6. But long before that, the same quote appears in an advertisement for Encyclopaedia Britannica that ran in The Atlantic Monthly: Volume 216 from 1965, p. 139 http://books.google.com/books?id=TuMmAQAAIAAJ&q=%22so+is+a+lot%22#search_anchor. The ad mentioned Einstein but did not directly attribute the quote to him: "Encyclopaedia Britannica says: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot. The more you know, the more you need to know — as Albert Einstein, for one, might have told you. Great knowledge has a way of bringing with it great responsibility. The people who put the Encyclopaedia Britannica together feel the same way. After all, if most of the world had come to count on you as the best single source of complete, accurate, up-to-date information on everything, you'd want to be pretty sure you knew what you were talking about."
Misattributed

Knowledge

“That is simple, my friend. It is because Politics is more difficult than physics.”

Albert Einstein

Einstein when asked "Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?” a conferee at a meeting at Princeton, N.J. (Jan 1946), as recalled by Greenville Clark in "Letters to the Times" in New York Times (22 Apr 1955), 24
1940s
Variant: That is simple, my friend. It is because Politics is more difficult than physics.

“We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it.”

Albert Einstein

As recalled by his biographer Abraham Pais in Reviews of Modern Physics, 51, 863 (1979): 907. Cited in Boojums All The Way Through by N. David Mermin (1990), p. 81 http://books.google.com/books?id=bf5bjBk095UC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q&f=false
Attributed in posthumous publications

Reality

“Make a lot of walks to get healthy and don’t read that much but save yourself some until you’re grown up.”

Albert Einstein

Geh recht viel spazieren, dass Du recht gesund wirst und lies nicht gar zu viel sondern spar Dir noch was auf bis Du gross bist.
Letter to his son Eduard Einstein (June 1918)
1910s

Reading

“You must warn people not to make the intellect their God. The intellect knows methods but it seldom knows values, and they come from feeling. If one doesn't play a part in the creative whole, he is not worth being called human. He has betrayed his true purpose.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 135

God , People , Feeling , Parting

“This is the reason why all attempts to obtain a deeper knowledge of the foundations of physics seem doomed to me unless the basic concepts are in accordance with general relativity from the beginning. This situation makes it difficult to use our empirical knowledge, however comprehensive, in looking for the fundamental concepts and relations of physics, and it forces us to apply free speculation to a much greater extent than is presently assumed by most physicists.”

Albert Einstein

1950s, On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation (1950)

Knowledge

“Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.”

Albert Einstein

Einstein discussing the letter he sent Roosevelt raising the possibility of atomic weapons. from "Atom: Einstein, the Man Who Started It All," Newsweek Magazine (10 March 1947).
1940s

“I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.”

Albert Einstein

Response to being shown a "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" column with the headline "Greatest Living Mathematician Failed in Mathematics" in 1935. Quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (2007), p. 16 http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA16#v=onepage&q&f=false
1930s

Mathematics

“As an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents… I congratulate you on the great successes of your life's work.”

Albert Einstein

Einstein's letter http://www.teslasociety.com/einsteinletter.jpg to Nikola Tesla for Tesla's 75th birthday (1931)
1930s

Life , Success

“Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means.”

Albert Einstein

When asked the question, “Why a ‘Jewish’ University?” when Einstein was assisting Chaim Weizmann in fundraising for The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
As quoted in [Albert Einstein, Letter “Einstein in Singapore.” Manchester Guardian, October 12, 1929]
1920s

Science , Success

“I believe that we don't need to worry about what happens after this life, as long as we do our duty here—to love and to serve.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 94

Love , Life

“America is a democracy and has no Hitler, but I am afraid for her future; there are hard times ahead for the American people, troubles will be coming from within and without. America cannot smile away their Negro problem nor Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are cosmic laws.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 108

People , Law , Smile , Democracy

“What lead me more or less directly to the special theory of relativity was the conviction that the electromotive force acting on a body in motion in a magnetic field was nothing else but an electric field.”

Albert Einstein

Letter to the Michelson Commemorative Meeting of the Cleveland Physics Society (1952), as quoted by R.S.Shankland, Am J Phys 32, 16 (1964), p35, republished in A P French, Special Relativity, ISBN 0177710756
1950s

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.”

Albert Einstein

Gutkind Letter (3 January 1954), [Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear, The Guardian, 13 May 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion]
1950s

God , People , Religion , Change

“First you must have faith in an eternal world independent of you; then you must have faith in your ability to perceive it, and finally you must try to explain it by means of concepts or mathematical constructions. But don't always accept traditional concepts without reexamining them. Even overthrow my relativity theory, if you find a better one.... You must believe that the world was created as a unified whole which is comprehensible to man. Of course, it's going to take an infinitely long time to investigate this unified creation. But to me that is the highest and most sacred duty—unifying physics. Simplicity is the criterion of the universe.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 139

World , Faith , Mathematics , Universe

“You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe. But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.”

Albert Einstein

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Life , God , Age , Fear

“Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and in personal originality. But if you asked me to prove what I believe, I couldn't. You can spend your whole life trying to prove what you believe; you may hunt for reasons, but it will all be in vain. Yet our beliefs are like our existence; they are facts. If you don't yet know what to believe in, then try to learn what you feel and desire.”

Albert Einstein

Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap."
Unsourced variant: "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you do not know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way." The earliest published version of this variant appears to be The Human Side of Scientists by Ralph Edward Oesper (1975), p. 58 http://books.google.com/books?id=-J0cAQAAIAAJ&q=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&dq=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&hl=en, but no source is provided, and the similarity to the "Life Magazine" quote above suggests it's likely a misquote.
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 136

Life , Feeling , Learning , Personality

“The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 10

Law , Sense , Universe

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves”

Albert Einstein

Found anonymously in newspaper columns from the early 1920s http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/31/kiss. Originally presented in dialogue format https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5219841/safety_first/: "Dorcas—”Do you ever allow a man to kiss you when you’re out motoring with him? Philippa—"Never, if a man can drive safely while kissing me he’s not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."
It does not seem to have been attributed to Einstein until the 1990s (e.g. here https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.freemasonry/YILn0A-U_WM/f1Grm2akU-4J).
Misattributed

Relationship , Wedding , Girl , Kiss

“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”

Albert Einstein

Attributed without source to Einstein in Mieczyslaw Taube, Evolution of Matter and Energy on a Cosmic and Planetary Scale (1985), page 1
Disputed

Books , Understanding , Universe

“Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. We see him only the way a louse sitting upon him would.”

Albert Einstein

Variant: Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.

As quoted by Abraham Pais in Subtle is the Lord:The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (1982), p. 235 ISBN 0-192-80672-6
Source: Letter to Heinrich Zangger (10 March 1914), quoted in The Curious History of Relativity by Jean Eisenstaedt (2006), p. 126 http://books.google.com/books?id=d2bnXTOtCD8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA126#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Way , Nature

“We Jews have been too adaptable. We have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies for the sake of social conformity. … Even in modern civilization, the Jew is most happy if he remains a Jew.”

Albert Einstein

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Happiness

“One has a feeling that one has a kind of home in this timeless community of human beings that strive for truth. … I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein's God (1997), p. 98

God , People , Truth , Feeling

“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.”

Albert Einstein

"Only Then Shall We Find Courage", New York Times Magazine (23 June 1946).
1940s

World , Nature , Thinking

“[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.”

Albert Einstein

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 Brian, p. 129; "Einstein Due Today" (February 2005) edited by József Illy, Manuscript 25-32 of the Einstein Paper Project; all previous sources as per Einstein His Life and Universe (2007) by Walter Isaacson, p. 299
Unsourced variants: "I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book" and "Never memorize what you can look up in books." (The second version is found in "Recording the Experience" (10 June 2004) at The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/world-record.html, but no citation to Einstein's writings is given).
1920s

Books , Education , Thinking , Learning

“It's not as simple as that. Knowledge is necessary, too. An intuitive child couldn't accomplish anything without some knowledge. There will come a point in everyone's life, however, where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without ever knowing precisely how. One can never know why, but one must accept intuition as a fact.”

Albert Einstein

In response to statement "You once told me that progress is made only by intuition, and not by the accumulation of knowledge."
Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "It is not quite so simple. Knowledge is necessary too. A child with great intuition could not grow up to become something worthwhile in life without some knowledge. However there comes a point in everyone's life where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without knowing precisely how.":
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 137

Life , Knowledge

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”

Albert Einstein

Letter to Dr. H. L. Gordon (May 3, 1949 - AEA 58-217) as quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007) by Walter Isaacson ISBN 9780743264730
1940s

Way , Idea

“It is this mythical, or rather this symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science. Thus, it is of vital importance for the preservation of true religion that such conflicts be avoided when they arise from subjects which, in fact, are not really essential for the pursuance of the religious aims.”

Albert Einstein

1940s, Religion and Science: Irreconcilable? (1948)

Religion , Idea , Science

“Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.”

Albert Einstein

Unser ganzer gepriesener Fortschritt der Technik, überhaupt die Civilisation, ist der Axt in der Hand des pathologischen Verbrechers vergleichbar.
Letter to Heinrich Zangger (1917), as quoted in A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit by Alan Lightman (2005), p. 110 http://books.google.com/books?id=-yo_gVxMs6MC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA110#v=onepage&q&f=false, and in Albert Einstein: A Biography by Albrecht Fölsing (1997), p. 399 http://books.google.com/books?id=Kmm0foYfvQAC&q=%22compared+to+an+axe%22#search_anchor
Sometimes paraphrased as "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
1910s

“Anonymity is no excuse for stupidity.”

Albert Einstein

c. 1948, p. 54
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Stupidity

“Dear mother! Today a joyful notice. H. A. Lorentz has telegraphed me that the English expeditions have really proven the deflection of light at the sun.”

Albert Einstein

Liebe Mutter! Heute eine freudige Nachricht. H. A. Lorentz hat mir telegraphiert, dass die englischen Expeditionen die Lichtablenkung an der Sonne wirklich bewiesen haben.
Postcard to his mother Pauline Einstein (1919)
1910s

Light , Sun

“Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.”

Albert Einstein

Letter (30 July 1947), p. 46
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Love , Men , Sense

“On quantum theory I use up more brain grease (rough translation of German idiom) than on relativity.”

Albert Einstein

Quoted by Otto Stern, a colleague of Einstein in Zurich from 1912 to 1914, in a 1962 oral history interview http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4904.html with Thomas S. Kuhn
Attributed in posthumous publications

“A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. On the other hand, representatives of science have often made an attempt to arrive at fundamental judgments with respect to values and ends on the basis of scientific method, and in this way have set themselves in opposition to religion. These conflicts have all sprung from fatal errors.”

Albert Einstein

1940s, Science and Religion (1941)

Truth , Religion , Way , Error

“May they not forget to keep pure the great heritage that puts them ahead of the West: the artistic configuration of life, the simplicity and modesty of personal needs, and the purity and serenity of the Japanese soul.”

Albert Einstein

Comment made after a six-week trip to Japan in November-December 1922, published in Kaizo 5, no. 1 (January 1923), 339. Einstein Archive 36-477.1. Appears in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 269
1920s

Life , Soul , Personality , Forgetting

“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?”

Albert Einstein

1920s, Sidelights on Relativity (1922)

Mathematics , Reality

“Wait a minute! I am not a mystic. Trying to find out the laws of nature has nothing to do with mysticism, though in the face of creation I feel very humble. It is as if a spirit is manifest infinitely superior to man's spirit. Through my pursuit in science I have known cosmic religious feelings. But I don't care to be called a mystic.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 117

Law , Feeling , Nature , Science

“You see, when a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a globe he doesn't notice that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.”

Albert Einstein

Attributed to Einstein in Carl Seelig's Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography (1956), p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=VCbPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22blind+beetle%22#search_anchor. Said to have been a comment he made to his son Eduard when Eduard asked him, at age 9, "Why are you actually so famous, papa?"
Attributed in posthumous publications

“The development during the present century is characterized by two theoretical systems essentially independent of each other: the theory of relativity and the quantum theory. The two systems do not directly contradict each other; but they seem little adapted to fusion into one unified theory.”

Albert Einstein

"The Fundamentals of Theoretical Physics," (1940) as quoted in Out of My Later Years (1976)
1940s

“Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.”

Albert Einstein

Statement on the occasion of Gandhi's 70th birthday (1939) Einstein archive 32-601, published in Out of My Later Years http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=einstein+%22out+of+my+later+years%22+%22will+scarce+believe%22&source=web&ots=xRZlwUOcEY&sig=0oe_RZgwXaNYtrIGz-XDqmfWna0 (1950).
1930s
Variant: Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.”

Albert Einstein

The earliest published source located on Google Books attributing this to Einstein is the 2000 book The Internet Handbook for Writers, Researchers, and Journalists by Mary McGuire, p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?id=Sb-v0K2EkNAC&q=einstein#search_anchor. It was attributed to him on the internet before that, as in this post from 1997 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.graphics.apps.lightwave/msg/d13c55cc4cca4867?hl=en. Variants of the quote can be found well before this however, as in the 1989 book Urban Surface Water Management by S. G. Walesh, which on p. 315 http://books.google.com/books?id=-LcZUPtDykQC&q=%22beyond+imagination%22#v=snippet&q=%22beyond%20imagination%22&f=false contains the statement (said to have been 'stated anonymously'): "The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a challenge and opportunity beyond imagination." Even earlier, the article "A Paper Industry Application of Systems Engineering and Direct Digital Control" http://books.google.com/books?id=A-YpAQAAIAAJ&q=%22and+direct+digital+control%22#search_anchor by H. D. Couture, Jr. and M. A. Keyes, which appears in the 1969 Advances in Instrumentation: Vol. 24, Part 4, has a statement on this page http://books.google.com/books?id=A-YpAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Computers+are+incredibly+fast%2C+accurate+and+stupid%22#search_anchor which uses phrasing similar to the supposed Einstein quote in describing computers and people: "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. On the other hand, a well trained operator as compared with a computer is incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant." Variants with slightly different wording can be found earlier than 1969, as in this April 1968 article http://journals.lww.com/joem/Citation/1968/04000/Fast,_Accurate_and_Stupid.10.aspx. The earliest source located, and most likely the origin of this saying, is an article titled "Problems, Too, Have Problems" by John Pfeiffer, which appeared in the October 1961 issue of Fortune magazine. As quoted here http://books.google.com/books?id=TwwQAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Man+is+a+slow%2C+sloppy%2C+and+brilliant+thinker%3B+computers+are+fast%2C+accurate%2C+and+stupid%22#search_anchor, Pfeiffer's article contained the line "Man is a slow, sloppy, and brilliant thinker; computers are fast, accurate, and stupid."
Misattributed

Stupidity , Imagination

“Contempt prior to investigation is what enslaves a mind to Ignorance.”

Albert Einstein

This or similar statements are more often misattributed to Herbert Spencer, but the source of the phrase "contempt prior to investigation" seems to have been William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794): "The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination."
Misattributed