Persons

An expert is a person who has few new ideas; a beginner is a person with many.

Don’t become a seeker of success. Become a person of value.

Don’t dream of being a good person, be a human being is valuable and gives value to life.

Empathy is patiently and sincerely seeing the world through the other person’s eyes. It is not learned in school; it is cultivated over a lifetime.

How can any educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science.

I am content in my later years. I have kept my good humor and take neither myself nor the next person seriously.

I do not much believe in education. Each person ought to be his or her own model, however frightful that may be.

I see in Nature a magnificent structure… that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.

I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: “If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.” I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.

In one’s youth every person and every event appear to be unique. With age one becomes much more aware that similar events recur. Later on, one is less often delighted or surprised, but also less disappointed than in earlier years.

One should respect an honest person even if he expresses opinions differing from one’s own.

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.

The essentials of being a person of my type lies precisely in what they think and how they think, not in what they do. Your thoughts shape you.

The greatest knowledge a person can possess is the address of the local library.

The man with the greatest soul will always face the greatest war with the low minded person.

We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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.

What I see in Nature is a grand design that we can understand only imperfectly, one with which a responsible person must look at with humility.

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.