“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel is as good as dead.”

from Ideas and Opinions

Chapters: 1. The Unnamed

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“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 feeling 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.”

Chapters: 68. Joining Heaven & Earth

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“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”

Chapters: 48. Unlearning

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“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

Chapters: 60. Less is More

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“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“centralization – the elimination of independent groups – leads to one-sidedness, barrenness… because such centralization suppresses rivalry of opinions.”

Chapters: 20. Unconventional Mind

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“Everybody is 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.”

Chapters: 61. Lying Low

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“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Chapters: 41. Distilled Life

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“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.”

Chapters: 40. Returning

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“I rarely think in words at all.”

Chapters: 64. Ordinary Mind

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“in order to attain any definite goal it is imperative that one person should do the thinking and commanding.”

Chapters: 42. Children of the Way

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“Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.”

Chapters: 47. Effortless Success

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“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s that I stay with problems longer.”

Chapters: 43. No Effort, No Trace

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“Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibly invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie.”

Chapters: 53. Shameless Thieves

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“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

Chapters: 78. Water

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“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Chapters: 59. The Gardening of Spirit

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“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.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

Chapters: 58. Goals Without Means

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“that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor… This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed… and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriots – how passionately I hate them!... this bogey would have disappeared long ago had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests.”

Chapters: 31. Victory Funeral

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“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Chapters: 71. Sick of Sickness

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“The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

Chapters: 76. The Soft and Flexible

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“The trite objects of human efforts – possessions, outward success, luxury – have always seemed to me contemptible.”

from Ideas and Opinions

Chapters: 44. Fame and Fortune

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“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”

Chapters: 13. Honor and Disgrace

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“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

Chapters: 81. Journey Without Goal

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“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”

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“science without religion is lame… religion without science is blind”

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“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence — these are the features of the Jewish tradition”

from Ideas and Opinions

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“The bond that has united the Jews for thousands of years and that unites them today is, above all, the democratic ideal of social justice”

from Ideas and Opinions

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“I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

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“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

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“The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

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“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought with but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

”

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“My religion consists in a humble awe before the higher reality that reveals itself in the smallest details”

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“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain the path does not lie through the fear of life and death and blind faith but through striving after rational knowledge.”

from Science, Philosophy, and Religion 1941

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“The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational systems suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.”

from Monthly Review, 1949

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“Anonymity is no excuse for stupidity”

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

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“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

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“The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”

from My World Picture, 1934

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“Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.”

from Youth, 1932

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“it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who are filled with the highest kind of religious feeling”

from The World as I See It, 1934

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“The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of cosmic religious feeling which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image”

from The World as I See It, 1934

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“Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

Chapters: 43. Inscrutable

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“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

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“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

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“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”

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“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

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“Schopenhauer's saying, that 'a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,' has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place.”

from My World-view, 1931​

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“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

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“No matter when this man might have left us, we would have felt that we had suffered an irreplaceable loss... may he have a lasting influence on the hearts and minds of men!”

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“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”

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“Mme Blavatsky is a bit wild and somewhat irrational and speaks as if she were the Oracle of Delphi. But I will admit that I find some interesting observations in her book published back in 1888 at a time when physics and science were in their swaddling clothes... I'm astonished how much in keeping it is with modern Physics”

from Ojai Valley News (1983)

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“I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.”

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“Man—like every other animal—is by nature indolent. If nothing spurs him on, he will hardly think, and will behave from habit like an automaton.”

from Out of My Later Years (1950)

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“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

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“If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.”

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“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life is based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”

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“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”

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“Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.”

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“Anonymity is no excuse for stupidity.”

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“Humanity will get the fate it deserves.”

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“Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.”

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“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

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“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

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“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”

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“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”

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“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”

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“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”

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“One may say 'the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility'”

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“Do things you love, even if you’re terrible at them.”

from The Einstein Effect

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“To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.”

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“A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”

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“Only 40 years passed between the moment Einstein determined that any kind of mass could be converted into energy—that's what E=mc2 means—and the moment atom bombs obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear power stations mushroomed all over the globe.”

— Yuval Harari יובל נח הררי‎ 1976 CE –
Israeli historian, professor, and philosopher

from Sapiens

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“Albert Einstein has repeatedly stated his belief in the organization of the world for peace by some kind of world government... I have the strongest hope that the new type of world organization that his piercing mind sees so clearly may be realized... His second vision may save the world, which his first vision, in the hands of bat-eyed politicians, could be exploited to destroy.”

— Lín Yǔtáng 林語堂 1895 – 1976 CE
from On the Wisdom of America, 1950

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