“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space.”
Letter of 1950, as quoted in The New York Times (29 March 1972) and The New York Post (28 November 1972). However, The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (Princeton University Press, 2005: , p. 206, has a different and presumably more accurate version of this letter, which she dates to February 12, 1950 and describes as "a letter to a distraught father who had lost his young son and had asked Einstein for some comforting words":<blockquote>A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.</blockquote> Letter transcript and photograph http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/11/delusion.html
Google Translate, with its improved neural machine translation system, gives a slightly different translation of the original German quote, as discussed by Bryce Haymond on his blog https://thymindoman.com/2018/03/29/einsteins-misquote-on-the-illusion-of-feeling-separate-from-the-whole/.<blockquote>A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole, what we call the “Universe.” He experiences himself and his feelings as separate from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The quest for liberation from this bondage is the only object of true religion. Not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming it gives us the attainable measure of inner peace.</blockquote>
1950s
Context: A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
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Albert Einstein 702
German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativi… 1879–1955Related quotes
The Mind (begun in September 1723; not completed).
R.S. Lynd (1939) Knowledge of What? p. 125-6, cited in Karl William Kapp (1976), The nature and significance of institutional economics http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6435.1976.tb01971.x/abstract. in: Kyklos, Vol 29/2, Jan 1976, p. 209
Letter to Sister Mary James Power (1 October 1934); published in The Wild God of the World : An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers (2003), edited by Albert Gelpi, p. 189; also partly quoted in the essay "Robinson Jeffers, Pantheist Poet" http://web.archive.org/20011119074326/members.aol.com/PHarri5642/jeffers.htm by John Courtney
Context: I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars, none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions — the world of spirits.
I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him. We are not important to him, but he to us.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: It is hard to combine and unite these two qualities, the carefulness of one who is affected by circumstances, and the intrepidity of one who heeds them not. But it is not impossible: else were happiness also impossible. We should act as we do in seafaring: “What can I do?”—Choose the master, the crew, the day, the opportunity. Then comes a sudden storm. What matters it to me? my part has been fully done. The matter is in the hands of another—the Master of the ship. The ship is foundering. What then have I to do? I do the only thing that remains to me—to be drowned without fear, without a cry, without upbraiding God, but knowing that what has been born must likewise perish. For I am not Eternity, but a human being—a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like the hour must pass! (186).
Preface; lead paragraph
A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702
Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 7 (Heather)
