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Albert Einstein
Current mood:  happy
Category: Religion and Philosophy
A letter from Albert Einstein being auctioned in London
this week adds to the long-simmering debate about the
Nobel Prize-winning physicist's religious views
In the note, written the year before his death,
Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product
of human weakness and the Bible as pretty childish
The letter, handwritten in German, is being sold by
Bloomsbury Auctions and expected to fetch between
$12,000 and $16,000
Einstein, who helped unravel the mysteries
of the universe with his theory of relativity,
expressed complex and arguably contradictory
views on faith, perceiving a universe suffused
with spirituality while rejecting organized religion
The letter up for sale, written to philosopher
Eric Gutkind in January 1954, suggests his views
on religion did not mellow with age
In it, Einstein said that the word God is for me
nothing more than the expression and product
of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of
honorable but still primitive legends which are
nevertheless pretty childish
For me, he added, the Jewish religion like all
other religions is an incarnation of the most
childish superstitions
Born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1879,
Einstein said he went through a devout phase
as a child before beginning to question
conventional religion at the age of 12
In later life, he expressed a sense of wonder
at the universe and its mysteries
what he called a cosmic religious feeling
and famously said:
Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind
Great spirits have always found
violent opposition from mediocre minds
The latter cannot understand it when a
man doen not thoughtlessly submit to
hereditary prejudices but honestly and
courageously uses his intelligence
Einstein
Truth
It is a magnificent feeling to recognize
the unity of complex phenomena which
appear to be things quite apart from
the direct visible truth
The ideals which have always shone
before me and filled me with the joy of living
are goodness, beauty, and truth
To make a goal of comfort or happiness
has never appealed to me;
a system of ethics built on this basis
would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a
sphere of activity in which we are
permitted to remain children all our lives
A large part of history is replete with the
struggle for human rights, an eternal struggle
in which final victory can never be won
But to tire in that struggle would mean the ruin of society
Freedom
If the possibility of the spiritual development
of all individuals is to be secured,
a second kind of outward freedom is necessary
The development of science and of the
creative activities of the spirit in general requires
still another kind of freedom, which may be
characterized as inward freedom
It is this freedom of the spirit which consists
in the interdependence of thought from the
restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices
as well as from unphilosophical routinizing
and habit in general
This inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature
and a worthy object for the individual
All religions, arts and sciences are
branches of the same tree
All these aspirations are directed toward
ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere
of mere physical existence and leading
the individual towards freedom
Fear
The fear of death is the most
unjustified of all fears,
for there's no risk of accident
for someone who's dead
Misc
Heroism on command, senseless violence,
and all the loathsome nonsense that goes
by the name of patriotism --
how passionately I hate them!
Force always attracts men of low morality,
and I believe it to be an invariable rule that
tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels
There is a kind of compliance which is
a crime against humanity,
though it passes for political wisdom
Politics is a pendulum whose swings
between anarchy and tyranny are fueled
by perpetually rejuvenated illusions
The minority, the ruling class at present,
has the schools and press,
usually the Church as well,
under its thumb
This enables it to organize and sway
the emotions of the masses,
and make its tool of them
I cannot believe that God would choose
to play dice with the universe
Education is what remains after one
has forgotten everything he learned in school
I know not with what weapons World War III
will be fought, but World War IV will be fought
with sticks and stones
The important thing is not to stop questioning
Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind
I am enough of an artist to
draw freely upon my imagination
Imagination is more important than knowledge
Knowledge is limited
Imagination encircles the world
The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the mysterious
It is the source of all true art and science
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and
stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead:
his eyes are closed
Peace cannot be achieved through violence,
it can only be attained through understanding
To me the worst thing seems to be a
school principally to work with methods of fear,
force and artificial authority
Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments,
the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils
and produces a subservient subject
Gravitation can not be held responsible
for people falling in love
Unless Americans come to realize that
they are not stronger in the world because
they have the bomb but weaker because
of their vulnerability to atomic attack,
they are not likely to conduct their policy
at Lake Success [the United Nations] or
in their relations with Russia in a spirit that
furthers the arrival at an understanding
A human being is part of a whole,
called by us the 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 for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest us
Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circles of compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the whole
of nature in its beauty
Only two things are infinite,
the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the universe
A man's ethical behavior should be
based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties and needs;
no religious basis is necessary
Man would indeed be in a poor way
if he had to be restrained by fear of
punishment and hope of reward after death
In order to be an immaculate member
of a flock of sheep, one must above all
be a sheep oneself
A hundred times every day I remind myself
that my inner and outer life are based on
the labors of others
Only a life lived for others is a life worth while
Few are those who see with their
own eyes and feel with their own hearts
Things should be made as simple as possible,
but not any simpler
Anyone who has never made a mistake
has never tried anything new
Try not to become a man of success
but rather to become a man of value
Perfection of means and confusion of ends
seem to characterize our age
Not everything that counts can be counted,
and not everything that can be counted counts
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character
All our lauded technological progress --
our very civilization - is like the axe in the
hand of the pathological criminal
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
~~Albert Einstein~~
6:34 AM
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