Albert Einstein: Human (page 3)

“The only progress I can see is progress in organization. The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit by the experiences of others. Being both a father and teacher, I know we can teach our children nothing. We can transmit to them neither our knowledge of life nor of mathematics. Each must learn its lesson anew.”

Albert Einstein

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life , Children , Mathematics , Knowledge

“Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.
The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.
This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.
Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.
His historical picture closes with the end of the nineteenth century, and with good reason. By that time it seemed that the influence of these mythic, authoritatively anchored forces which can be denoted as religious, had been reduced to a tolerable level in spite of all the persisting inertia and hypocrisy.
Even then, a new branch of mythic thought had already grown strong, one not religious in nature but no less perilous to mankind — exaggerated nationalism. Half a century has shown that this new adversary is so strong that it places in question man's very survival. It is too early for the present-day historian to write about this problem, but it is to be hoped that one will survive who can undertake the task at a later date.”

Albert Einstein

Foreword of "Man and his Gods" by Homer W. Smith
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

Truth , Books , Fear , Religion

“The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent on each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is — insofar as it is thinkable at all — primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensible and effective tool of his research.”

Albert Einstein

Contribution in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, p. A. Schilpp, ed. (The Library of Living Philosophers, Evanston, IL (1949), p. 684). Quoted in Einstein's Philosophy of Science http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/
1940s

World , Way , Sense , Appearance

“Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells man his purpose in this life.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 103

Life

“The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.”

Albert Einstein

1940s, Science and Religion (1941)

God , Fear , Religion , Beauty

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”

Albert Einstein

Statement to German anti-Nazi diplomat and author Prince Hubertus zu Lowenstein around 1941, as quoted in his book Towards the Further Shore : An Autobiography (1968)
Attributed in posthumous publications

God , People , Quotes , Support

“The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.”

Albert Einstein

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

Art , Way , Teachers

“If we want to improve the world we cannot do it with scientific knowledge but with ideals. Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Gandhi have done more for humanity than science has done. We must begin with the heart of man—with his conscience—and the values of conscience can only be manifested by selfless service to mankind. In this respect, I feel that the Churches have much guilt. She has always allied herself with those who rule, who have political power, and more often than not, at the expense of peace and humanity as a whole.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 92

World , Peace , Feeling , Knowledge

“The world needs new moral impulses which, I'm afraid, won't come from the churches, heavily compromised as they have been throughout the centuries. Perhaps those impulses must come from scientists in the tradition of Galileo, Kepler and Newton. In spite of failures and persecutions, these men devoted their lives to proving that the universe is a single entity, in which, I believe, a humanized God has no place. The genuine scientist is not moved by praise or blame, nor does he preach. He unveils the universe and people come eagerly, without being pushed, to behold a new revelation: the order, the harmony, the magnificence of creation! And as man becomes conscious of the stupendous laws that govern the universe in perfect harmony, he begins to realize how small he is. He sees the pettiness of human existence, with its ambitions and intrigues, its "I am better than thou" creed. This is the beginning of cosmic religion within him; fellowship and human service become his moral code. And without such moral foundations, we are hopelessly doomed.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 66

Men , God , People , World

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“To think with fear of the end of one's life is pretty general with human beings. It is one of the means nature uses to conserve the life of the species. Approached rationally that fear is the most unjustified of all fears, for there is no risk of any accidents to one who is dead or not yet born. In short, the fear is stupid but it cannot be helped.”

Albert Einstein

Letter to Eileen Danniheisser (1953), quoted in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel by Banesh Hoffman (1973), p. 261 http://books.google.com/books?id=sdDaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22think+with+fear%22#search_anchor. The exact date, or the name of his correspondent, is not given in the snippet of the book available online, but the quote appears after the letter to the Queen of Belgium from 12 January 1953, and is prefaced by "Nine months later, in words that recall the beliefs of an early atomic speculator, the Roman poet Lucretius, Einstein had written to an inquirer", followed by the quote. The name "Eileen Danniheisser" is given in Time: Volume 144, where it is mentioned in the snippets here http://books.google.com/books?id=JDAnAQAAIAAJ&q=%22obsessive+thoughts%22#search_anchor and here http://books.google.com/books?id=JDAnAQAAIAAJ&q=%22think+with+fear%22#search_anchor that she had written Einstein "about her obsessive thoughts of death as a child".
1950s

Life , Stupidity , Fear , Nature

“Something there is that can refresh and revivify older people: joy in the activities of the younger generation—a joy, to be sure, that is clouded by dark forebodings in these unsettled times. And yet, as always, the springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding; and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond reach of the hand of fate and of all human delusions. And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope. For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms.”

Albert Einstein

Letter to Queen Mother Elizabeth of Belgium (20 March, likely 1936), written to her when she was depressed over the recent death of her husband and daughter-in-law, p. 51
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Life , Fate , People , Truth

“Many people think that the progress of the human race is based on experiences of an empirical, critical nature, but I say that true knowledge is to be had only through a philosophy of deduction. For it is intuition that improves the world, not just following a trodden path of thought. Intuition makes us look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be brought under one law. To look for related facts means holding onto what one has instead of searching for new facts. Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge. Intuition, not intellect, is the 'open sesame' of yourself.”

Albert Einstein

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 16

People , World , Law , Search