Walter Isaacson · 551 pages
Rating: (83.4K votes)
“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
“And all those boys of Europe born in those times, and thereabouts those times, Russian, French, Belgian, Serbian, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Italian, Prussian, German, Austrian, Turkish – and Canadian, Australian, American, Zulu, Gurkha, Cossack, and all the rest – their fate was written in a ferocious chapter in the book of life, certainly. Those millions of mothers and their million gallons of mother’s milk, millions of instances of small talk and baby talk, beatings and kisses, ganseys and shoes, piled up in history in great ruined heaps, with a loud and broken music, human stories told for nothing, for ashes, for death’s amusement, flung on the mighty scrapheap of souls, all those million boys in all their humours to be milled by the millstones of a coming war.”
― Sebastian Barry, quote from A Long Long Way
“I’ll write the recipe down for you.”
“I’ll just screw it up, anyway.”
Gram laughed. “All you do is mix the ingredients together, pour it in a bag with the salmon and half an hour later give it to Sean to throw on the grill. He cooked the salmon to perfection tonight.”
Of course he did. As he’d told her earlier, she had nothing to worry about because the Y chromosome came with an innate ability to master the barbecue grill.
“The salad was good, too,” Sean said.
“Thanks,” Emma muttered. “Even I can’t screw up shredding lettuce.”
The man looked incredibly relaxed for somebody who'd probably been raked over the coals by his aunt and was now relaxing with two women he barely knew. She, on the other hand, felt as if she was detoxing. Jumpy. Twitching. A trickle of sweat at the small of her back.
Sean stood and started gathering dishes, but held out a hand when Emma started to get up. “You ladies sit and visit. I’ll take care of the cleanup.”
Once he was inside, Gram smiled and raised her eyebrows. “He does dishes, too? No wonder you snapped him up.”
It was tempting to point out a few of his less attractive traits, like the fact that he was a sexist baboon who wouldn’t let her drive. But he was doing a good job of convincing Gram he was Emma’s Prince Charming, which was the whole point, so she bit back her annoyance with the Saint Sean routine. “He’s a keeper.”
― Shannon Stacey, quote from Yours to Keep
“Once upon a time there was a dwarf knight who only had fifty words to live in and they were so fleeting that he only had time to put on a suit of armor and ride swiftly on a black horse into a very well-lit woods where he vanished forever.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from The Tokyo-Montana Express
“Mawu felt her face where the still-fresh scar had just been opened up again. She examined the blood on her fingers as if it weren’t her own. Sir returned to the table and a servant slipped through the side door and passed him a wet cloth to wipe the blood from his hands.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench
“Her guardian sighed and looked back down at his book. "I can't tell you how much I look forward to these mature and scintillating conversations. Still, when the old Ari pays a visit, let me know."
"Old Ari? I was sarcastic to you before."
"True." He nodded, turning the page on the paperback. "But there was this era bewteen scared, sarcastic Ari and this new-fangled five year old Ari where you were actually a decent person to be around."
Ouch. "Bite me."
Jai grinned slyly and looked up at her from under his lashes. "Just tell me how hard.”
― Samantha Young, quote from Scorched Skies
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