“Everything that men do or think concerns the satisfaction of the needs they feel or the escape from pain.”

—  Albert Einstein

Wording in Ideas and Opinions: Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us.
1930s, Religion and Science (1930)
Context: Everything that men do or think concerns the satisfaction of the needs they feel or the escape from pain. This must be kept in mind when we seek to understand spiritual or intellectual movements and the way in which they develop. For feelings and longings are the motive forces of all human striving and productivity—however nobly these latter may display themselves to us.

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Albert Einstein 702
German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativi… 1879–1955

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