Albert Einstein: Use (page 2)
Albert Einstein was German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity. Explore interesting quotes on use.“We cannot solve the problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”
"Einstein's famous saying in Copenhagen", as quoted in a FBIS Daily Report https://books.google.de/books?id=DfQTAQAAMAAJ&q=%22We+cannot+solve%22: East Europe (4 April 1995), p. 45
Disputed
Source: 1920s, p. 157 London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Response to atheist Alfred Kerr in the winter of 1927, who after deriding ideas of God and religion at a dinner party in the home of the publisher Samuel Fischer, had queried him "I hear that you are supposed to be deeply religious" as quoted in The Diary of a Cosmopolitan (1971) by H. G. Kessler
Context: Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.
1940s, Science and Religion (1941)
1920s, Viereck interview (1929)
Context: In America, more than anywhere else, the individual is lost in the achievements of the many. America is beginning to be the world leader in scientific investigation. American scholarship is both patient and inspiring. The Americans show an unselfish devotion to science, which is the very opposite of the conventional European view of your countrymen. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves. It is not true that the dollar is an American fetish. The American student is not interested in dollars, not even in success as such, but in his task, the object of the search. It is his painstaking application to the study of the infinitely little and the infinitely large which accounts for his success in astronomy.
Obituary for physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (Nachruf auf Ernst Mach), Physikalische Zeitschrift 17 (1916), p. 101
1910s
Context: How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there not some more valuable work to be done in his specialty? That's what I hear many of my colleagues ask, and I sense it from many more. But I cannot share this sentiment. When I think about the ablest students whom I have encountered in my teaching — that is, those who distinguish themselves by their independence of judgment and not just their quick-wittedness — I can affirm that they had a vigorous interest in epistemology. They happily began discussions about the goals and methods of science, and they showed unequivocally, through tenacious defense of their views, that the subject seemed important to them.
Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. [Begriffe, welche sich bei der Ordnung der Dinge als nützlich erwiesen haben, erlangen über uns leicht eine solche Autorität, dass wir ihres irdischen Ursprungs vergessen und sie als unabänderliche Gegebenheiten hinnehmen. ] Thus they might come to be stamped as "necessities of thought," "a priori givens," etc. The path of scientific progress is often made impassable for a long time by such errors. [Der Weg des wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts wird durch solche Irrtümer oft für längere Zeit ungangbar gemacht. ] Therefore it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analysing long-held commonplace concepts and showing the circumstances on which their justification and usefulness depend, and how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. Thus their excessive authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, or replaced if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason.
“I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.”
Letter to Michele Besso (8 October 1952). According to Scientifically speaking: a dictionary of quotations, Volume 1 (2002), p. 154 http://books.google.com/books?id=FFIBzawsfPEC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q&f=false, the letter is reprinted on p. 487 of Correspondance 1903-1955 (1972) by Michele Besso.
1950s
Source: William Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983), First conversation, p. 8
Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "Then do not stop to think about the reasons for what you are doing, about why you are questioning. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 138
A note Einstein wrote underneath an etching of himself (made by Hermann Struck) which he sent to a friend, Dr. Hans Mühsam. According to the book, "the date is 1920 or perhaps earlier", p. 24
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Letter to Cornel Lanczos (21 March 1942), p. 68
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Foreword of "Man and his Gods" by Homer W. Smith
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)
Letter to Michele Besso (10 September 1952), Letter n°190, Correspondance, 1903-1955 (1972), by Pierre Speziali and Michele Angelo Besso
1950s
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 108
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Cambridge University Press, 1949, p. 672
"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949)
"Science and Religion" (1939-1941), p. 23 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false
1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950)