
“Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.”
"1896", p. 17
A Writer's Notebook (1946)
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 165
“Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.”
"1896", p. 17
A Writer's Notebook (1946)
“To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.”
How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)
Context: Literature... seeks to entertain — and why is this?... The reason, fundamentally, is that literature knows something that science does not: the human resistance to hearing the truth. Science does not inform scientists of this basic fact.... The wisdom of literature arises mainly from its attention to this point. To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.
“Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling, and what is the use of truth!”
Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), Chapter One : The Fear of Poetry
Context: Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling, and what is the use of truth!
How do we use feeling?
How do we use truth! However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
If we use the resources we now have, we and the world itself may move in one fullness. Moment to moment, we can grow, if we can bring ourselves to meet the moment with our lives.
“What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve.”
Source: Degrees of Knowledge (1932, Notre Dame Translation), p. 4.
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860), Behavior
Bennington College address (1970)
Context: I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty — and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine.
Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.
Inspiration
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 31 August 1983.
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)