# The best Albert Einstein quotes (that he actually said)

Einstein quotes with a verified source according to Wikiquote: letter, interview or article and year. The most shared fakes are left out: 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over', 'if you can't explain it simply' and 'two things are infinite', which there's no record of him saying.

- 28 votes · 17 items
- Nov 6, 2024 · Laura Gil
- https://even.best/en/l/448/the-best-albert-einstein-quotes-that-he-actually-said

## Top 15

1. **Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Letter to his son Eduard, 5 February 1930.
2. **Imagination is more important than knowledge** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — 'Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.' Interview with George Sylvester Viereck in The Saturday Evening Post, 1929.
3. **The important thing is not to stop questioning** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — 'Curiosity has its own reason for existence.' Recorded by William Miller in Life magazine, 2 May 1955.
4. **God does not play dice** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Popular version of 'I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice', in a letter to Max Born of 4 December 1926, against chance in quantum mechanics.
5. **Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Answer to the magazine Youth, reported by The New York Times in 1932.
6. **A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe', a part limited in time and space** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — A 1950 letter to a father who had lost his son; it goes on: 'He experiences himself... as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.'
7. **Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Quoted by Arnold Sommerfeld in his essay for Einstein's 70th birthday (1949).
8. **I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Letter to his biographer Carl Seelig, 11 March 1952.
9. **Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Said on his first visit to Princeton, in 1921; the words are carved over the fireplace in Fine Hall.
10. **The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Version of 'the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility', from the article 'Physics and Reality' (1936).
11. **The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Tribute to the cellist Pablo Casals, 1953; the origin of the popular 'the world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil…'.
12. **The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — A 1921 comment on Thomas Edison's general-knowledge test, recorded by Philipp Frank in his biography.
13. **I never think of the future. It comes soon enough** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Attributed to an interview aboard the ship Belgenland in December 1930.
14. **Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Recorded by William Miller in Life magazine after his death, in 1955.
15. **Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Letter to the philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen, 1940, defending Bertrand Russell.
16. **Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Popular summary of an idea from his lecture 'On the Method of Theoretical Physics' (Oxford, 1933), according to Quote Investigator.
17. **Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character** (-1 · ▲1 ▼2) — Speech in honour of Thomas Mann, January 1939.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.