“There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: In the vast all of the Universe, must there be this unique anomaly — a consciousness that knows itself, loves itself and feels itself, joined to an organism which can only live within such and such degrees of heat, a merely transitory phenomenon? No, it is not mere curiosity that inspires the wish to know whether or not the stars are inhabited by living organisms, by consciousness akin to our own, and a profound longing enters into that dream that our souls shall pass from star to star through the vast spaces of the heavens, in an infinite series of transmigrations. The feeling of the divine makes us wish and believe that everything is animated, that consciousness, in a greater or less degree, extends through everything. We wish not only to save ourselves, but to save the world from nothingness. And therefore God. Such is his finality as we feel it.

Aleph (2011)

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

As quoted in Journal of France and Germany (1942–1944) by Gilbert Fowler White, in excerpt published in Living with Nature&#x27;s Extremes: The Life of Gilbert Fowler White (2006) by Robert E. Hinshaw, p. 62. From the context http://books.google.com/books?id=_2qfZRp9SeEC&amp;lpg=PP1&amp;pg=PA62#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false it seems that White did not specify whether he had heard Einstein himself say this or whether he was repeating a quote that had been passed along by someone else, so without a primary source the validity of this quote should be considered questionable.<br>Some have argued that elsewhere Einstein defined a &quot;miracle&quot; as a type of event he did not believe was possible—Einstein on Religion by Max Jammer (1999) quotes on p. 89 from a 1931 conversation Einstein had with David Reichinstein, where Reichinstein brought up philosopher Arthur Liebert&#x27;s argument that the indeterminism of quantum mechanics might allow for the possibility of miracles, and Einstein replied that Liebert&#x27;s argument dealt &quot;with a domain in which lawful rationality [determinism] does not exist. A &#x27;miracle,&#x27; however, is an exception from lawfulness; hence, there where lawfulness does not exist, also its exception, i.e., a miracle, cannot exist.&quot; (&quot;Dort, wo eine Gesetzmässigkeit nicht vorhanden ist, kann auch ihre Ausnahme, d.h. ein Wunder, nicht existieren.&quot; D. Reichenstein, Die Religion der Gebildeten (1941), p. 21). However, it is clear from the context that Einstein was stating only that miracles cannot exist in a domain (quantum mechanics) where lawful rationality does not exist. He did not claim that miracles could never exist in any domain. Indeed, Einstein clearly believed, as seen in many quotations above, that the universe was comprehensible and rational, but he also described this characteristic of the universe as a &quot;miracle&quot;. In another example, he is quoted as claiming belief in a God, &quot;Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world.&quot; <br class="br">As quoted in From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (1993) by David T. Dellinger, p. 418 <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. <br class="br">Variant: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Ongoingness: The End of a Diary