Quotes from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think, he [Einstein] said.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness. Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“How did he get his ideas? “I’m enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“I believe that love is a better teacher than a sense of duty,” he said, “at least for me.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“(In a letter from Einstein to Curie) Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say. But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the publc is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels. Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages amoung us as you, and Langevin too, real peole with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply dont read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“I believe that the most important mission of the state is to protect the individual and to make it possible for him to develop into a creative personality,”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. —ALBERT EINSTEIN, IN A LETTER TO HIS SON EDUARD, FEBRUARY 5, 19301”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake,” he said. “Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister.” Freedom was a foundation for creativity.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“During the crossing, Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and by the time we arrived I was fully convinced that he really understands it.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Since the mathematicians have grabbed hold of the theory of relativity, I myself no longer understand it.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“When a person can take pleasure in marching in step to a piece of music it is enough to make me despise him. He has been given his big brain only by mistake.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said. “But,” he hastened to add, “intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“One day someone called the Institute and asked to speak to a particular dean. When his secretary said that the dean wasn’t available, the caller hesitantly asked for Einstein’s home address. That was not possible to give out, he was informed. The caller’s voice then dropped to a whisper. “Please don’t tell anybody,” he said, “but I am Dr. Einstein, I’m on my way home, and I’ve forgotten where my house is.”40”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.”46”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Falling in love is not the most stupid thing that people do,” Einstein scribbled on the letter, “but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Saya yakin bahwa rasa cinta adalah guru yang lebih baik ketimbang kewajiban, paling tidak bagi saya." -Einstein-”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“What do you think of Adolf Hitler?” Einstein replied, “He is living on the empty stomach of Germany. As soon as economic conditions improve, he will no longer be important.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“It is tasteless to prolong life artificially,” he told Dukas. “I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not.”*”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Einstein was asked what the next war would look like. “I do not know how the Third World War will be fought,” he answered, “but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into tyranny,” he warned the Russian scientists. “The danger of such deterioration is more acute in a country in which the government has authority not only over the armed forces but also over every channel of education and information as well as over the existence of every single citizen.”27”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“La ventaja competitiva de una sociedad no vendrá de lo bien que se enseñe en sus escuelas la multiplicación y las tablas periódicas, sino de lo bien que se sepa estimular la imaginación y la creatividad.”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

“«l’immaginazione è più importante della conoscenza».”
― Walter Isaacson, quote from Einstein: His Life and Universe

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Popular quotes

“For this will cure him that is sick, and rouse him that is in dumps; one that has loved, it will remember of it; one that has not, it will instruct. For there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see. But help me that God to write the passions of others; and while I write, keep me in my own right wits.”
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“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.’ —Muhammad Ali”
― John Marrs, quote from The Good Samaritan

“Griddle cakes, pancakes, hot cakes, flapjacks: why are there four names for grilled batter and only one word for love?”
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“Wishing I had a towel, I used my fingers to wipe the raindrops off my face. My wet face that had been partially protected by the brim of his cap. Which would have worked if the rain fell straight down. This had been slashing across.
“Oh, no.”
“What?” Jason said.
“Turn on the light.”
He did. I lowered the sun visor, looked at my reflection in the mirror, groaned, and slapped the visor back into place. “Turn the light off.”
“What’s wrong?”
I didn’t look at him, didn’t want him to see. “The makeup ran.”
Not as badly as I’d expected, but I had dark smudges beneath my eyes and my bruising was more visible.
“So what?”
I leaned my head back. “I look worse than I did the night you met me.”
“I thought you looked fine.”
I rolled my head to the side, so I could see him. Hoping the shadows made it so he couldn’t see me. “What are you talking about? I looked like a Cirque de Soleil performer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The black dots around my eyes?”
He shook his head. “I’m lost.”
“You were staring--”
“Oh, yeah.” He gazed through the windshield. “Sorry about that. I’ve just never seen eyes as green as yours. I was trying to figure out if you wore contacts.”
“You were looking at my eyes?”
“Yeah.”
“Not the makeup.”
He turned his attention back to me. “I didn’t realize you were wearing any. That night, anyway. Tonight it’s pretty obvious.”
“Oh.” Didn’t I feel silly? “I thought--” I shook my head. “Never mind.” On second thought…
“You don’t like all the makeup?”
“I just don’t think you need it. I mean, you look pretty without it.”
Oh, really? That was totally unexpected.
He started tapping the steering wheel like he was listening to a rock concert, or suddenly embarrassed, maybe wishing someone would shut him up. “Sorry I don’t have a towel in the car.”
Subject change. He was embarrassed. How cute was that?”
― Rachel Hawthorne, quote from The Boyfriend League

“Our past thinking has determined our present status, and our present thinking will determine our future status; for man is what man thinks.”
― Padmasambhava, quote from Tibetan Book of the Dead

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.