The best Albert Einstein quotes (that he actually said)
The top 3 according to 28 votes from people: Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving · Imagination is more important than knowledge · The important thing is not to stop questioning. (Updated Nov 6, 2024.)
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.
Automatically translated (original in Español). See the original
Top 15
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1
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving
Letter to his son Eduard, 5 February 1930.
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2
Imagination is more important than knowledge
'Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.' Interview with George Sylvester Viereck in The Saturday Evening Post, 1929.
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3
The important thing is not to stop questioning
'Curiosity has its own reason for existence.' Recorded by William Miller in Life magazine, 2 May 1955.
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4
God does not play dice
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.
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5
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile
Answer to the magazine Youth, reported by The New York Times in 1932.
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6
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe', a part limited in time and space
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.'
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7
Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore
Quoted by Arnold Sommerfeld in his essay for Einstein's 70th birthday (1949).
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8
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious
Letter to his biographer Carl Seelig, 11 March 1952.
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9
Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not
Said on his first visit to Princeton, in 1921; the words are carved over the fireplace in Fine Hall.
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10
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible
Version of 'the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility', from the article 'Physics and Reality' (1936).
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11
The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it
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…'.
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12
The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think
A 1921 comment on Thomas Edison's general-knowledge test, recorded by Philipp Frank in his biography.
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13
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough
Attributed to an interview aboard the ship Belgenland in December 1930.
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14
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value
Recorded by William Miller in Life magazine after his death, in 1955.
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15
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds
Letter to the philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen, 1940, defending Bertrand Russell.
Candidates
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16
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
Popular summary of an idea from his lecture 'On the Method of Theoretical Physics' (Oxford, 1933), according to Quote Investigator.
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17
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character
Speech in honour of Thomas Mann, January 1939.
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Comments (3)
Por fin frases de Einstein que dijo de verdad.
Por fin una lista de Einstein sin frases inventadas. Gracias.
La de «desde que los matemáticos invadieron la relatividad, ya no la entiendo ni yo» es buenísima 😂