Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Creativity is one of those hypnotic words which are prone to cast a spell upon our understanding and dissolve our thinking into haze.
My view is that science only has something to say about a very particular notion of God, which goes by the name of 'god of the gaps'.
Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.
If we had the fundamental laws of nature tomorrow, we still wouldn't understand consciousness. We wouldn't even understand turbulence.
Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.
I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
I think we have to safeguard ourselves against people who are a menace to others, quite apart from what may have motivated their deeds.
The beauty of it is that we have to content ourselves with the recognition of the miracle, beyond which there is no legitimate way out.
My intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.
Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable.
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
When I have one week to solve a seemingly impossible problem, I spend six days defining the problem. Then, the solution becomes obvious.
Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.
I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of the labor of my fellow men.
If you want to make your children brilliant, tell them fairy tales. If you want to make them more brilliant, tell them more fairy tales.
Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. (said of Mahatma Gandhi)
Conscious man, to be sure, has at all times been keenly aware that life is an adventure, that life must, forever, be wrested from death.
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it.
I do not play games. There is not time for it. When I get through with work, I don't want anything that requires the working of the mind.
Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!
Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.
People should be more like animals . . . they should be more intuitive; they should not be too conscious of what they do while they do it.
I am truly a "lone traveler" and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart.
Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.
Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.
Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. Where did the totality of reality come from? Did time have a beginning?
Far from being accidental details, the properties of nature's basic building blocks are deeply entwined with the fabric of space and time.
The real reason why general relativity is widely accepted is because it made predictions that were borne out by experimental observations.
Certainly good causes have sometimes been mobilized under the banner of religion, but you find the opposite, I think, more often the case.
Most people stop looking when they find the proverbial needle in the haystack. I would continue looking to see if there were other needles.
Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world. All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.
We must not only learn to tolerate our differences. We must welcome them as the richness and diversity which can lead to true intelligence.
What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
The real question is whether all your pondering and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That's what it all comes down to.
The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.
Americans swept away the instruments of English hereditary inequality - entails and titles of nobility - even before we had a constitution.
Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.
All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.