"It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."

"God always takes the simplest way."

"How was I able to live alone before, my little everything? Without you I lack self-confidence, passion for work, and enjoyment of life - in short, without you, my life is no life. [Written to his wife, Mileva]"

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music."

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced."

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"

"The human spirit must prevail over technology."

"We're all a genius, but If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

"In scientific thinking are always present elements of poetry. Science and music requires a thought homogeneous."

"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."

"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age."

"Force always attracts men of low morality."

"But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people--first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy."

"Life without playing music is inconceivable for me. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music, I get most joy in life out of music."

"PARAPHRASE: Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else. It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration."

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

"How do I work? I grope."

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it."

"Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe."

"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it."

"There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there."

"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

"The right to search for the truth implies also a duty, one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth."

"I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university."

"Success = 1 part work + 1 part play + 1 part keep your mouth shut."

"There is no substitute for hard work."

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

"If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity."

"Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."

"Never memorize something that you can look up."

"Dancers are the athletes of God."

"If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism."

"If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses, I would give you the following piece of advice: Don't listen to his words, examine his achievements. For to the discoverer in that field, the constructions of his imagination appear so necessary and so natural that he is apt to treat them not as the creations of his thoughts but as given realities."

"Out of clutter, find simplicity."

"Racism is a disease of white people."

"I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind."

"It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion."

"Still there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being."

"The principal art of the teacher is to awaken the joy in creation and knowledge."

"I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy."

"We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us."

"The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)"