Albert Einstein Quotes on Spirituality
- I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon,
in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.
- Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
- My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who
reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
- The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that
the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
- Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that
a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and
one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
- The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law,
which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it,
all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
- There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws.
There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
- 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.
- The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious;
It is the source of all true art and science.
- We should take care not to make the intellect our god;
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
- Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked
by the laughter of the Gods.
- When the solution is simple, God is answering.
- God does not play dice with the universe.
- God is subtle but he is not malicious.
- 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, restricting us to our personal desires and
to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
- Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth
as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
- The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is
not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
- Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
- Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
- The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe.
We are like a little child entering a huge library.
The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues.
The child knows that someone must have written these books.
It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which
they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-
a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
- The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life,
of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend
a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
- What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly,
and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.
This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
- The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion.
Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science.
Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and
lives in a state of fear is a dead man.
To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom
and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties -
this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment.
In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.
- The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men.
It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
- True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.
- Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends.
But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends.
To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and
to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual,
seems to me precisely the most important function which
religion has to form in the social life of man.
--from SimpleToRemember.com --Judaism on line
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Happiness
Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot. - Pirkei Avos 4:1
We create the world in which we live to a great extent. While many events are beyond our control… we still have the ability to control our attitudes toward a given situation to a large degree. Hence the emotional consequences of events is largely up to us… Happiness can be learned… Our thoughts control our emotions, and we have the ability to control our thoughts to a great degree… We ourselves choose to think those thoughts which promote our happiness or those with which we make ourselves miserable.
“A truly happy person does not allow his happiness to be dependent on any external factor over which he may not have control.” (Chochmah Umussar, vol.2, pp.331-2)
Base your happiness on your own attitudes, and you can be its master. If you tell yourself that you can only be happy if others do or say what you wish, your happiness is under the control of those people. You can never have a guarantee how others will behave. Even when they do behave as you wish, you are likely to feel uneasy about how they might behave in the future.
What you tell yourself about a given situation is the way that situation will affect you. Your attitude towards any event or situation is not based on its objective reality but on your own subjective evaluation of that event or situation.
Many people feel that the way they automatically view events and situations is the way those events really are. But the truth is that events, occurrences, and situations on the completely objective level just are.
It is the viewer who evaluates them as either positive, negative, or neutral. Once you have a strong awareness and internalization of this concept, you will have the ability to change your negative attitudes to more positive ones.
Rabbi Yeruchem Levovitz of the Mir made an observation that should be read very carefully. The point he raises is so important for a mastery of happiness that it should be reviewed a number of times: When a person is born, he finds the world in a certain organized fashion. As he grows up, he tries to adjust himself to the assumptions that are accepted in the world. He views each event that occurs with the same perspective as the other people of his generation. Theses perspectives originated in the past and have been handed down from parents to children. These assumptions are taken for granted to such an extent that most people react to the accepted perspective of the world as if they were laws of the universe that cannot be changed. They are accepted as reality and are not challenged. Only a small minority of people obtain the necessary wisdom to look at the world with complete objectivity. They take a critical look at each and every thing and try to understand everything as it really is instead of accepting the general prevalent outlook. Those who try to investigate the origin of every perspective will perceive everything in a much different light than is commonly accepted. (Daas Chochmah Umussar, vol. 1, pp. 75-6)
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The main text by Albert Einstein and the quote above are
from SimpleToRemember.com which is Judaism on line.
This website is for the Jewish people who follows Judaism,
yet the outsiders like myself can learn from the collected wisdom of the
Jewish people.