WISDOM FROM INTELLIGENCE: 12 PiECES OF ADViCE FROM ALBERT EiNSTEiN

The scientist’s name is synonymous with ingenuity, but his wisdom is what makes his truly intelligent. Albert Einstein has always been the author of some of my favorite quotation, and here is a compilation of his best known from fellow smarty pants at Stanford University:

• “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
• “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
• “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
• “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
• “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
• “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
• “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
• “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all 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.”
• “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
• “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
• “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)

Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)