Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979), p. 37 - 27 January 1921
Context: Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is love and devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition.
“When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept — the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.”
Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6
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John Updike 240
American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, an… 1932–2009Related quotes
"Science and Reality" (1931) Bios Vol. 2, No. 1 , p. 39
Werner Heisenberg as quoted in Quirks of the Quantum Mind, p. 175, ICRL Press, ISBN 1936033062
Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.298
[Has Christianity Failed You?, 2010, Zondervan, 9780310269557, 23963023M, http://books.google.com/books?id=Wr7-r3Vz2x4C&pg=PA157&dq=%22I+think+the+reason+we+sometimes+have+the+false+sense%22, 157]
2010s
Comment on establishing the University of Virginia, in a letter to Thomas Cooper (7 October 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) edited by Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol VII, p. 200 http://books.google.com/books?id=jrSgJGp-B64C&pg=RA1-PA200&dq=%22A+professorship+of+theology+should+have+no+place+in+our+institution%22&ei=u65FR562EpqCpwLkk9XxBg
1810s
Context: I agree … that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 215
“It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings”
1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Context: We are and irrefutable arbiters of value, and in the world of value Nature is only a part. Thus in this world we are greater than Nature. In the world of values, Nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad deserving of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine our good life, not for Nature – not even for Nature personified as God.