“The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.”

“We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”

“It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.”

“Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.”

“Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.”

“I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.”

“There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.”

“To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.”

“The destiny of civilized humanity depends more than ever on the moral forces it is capable of generating.”

“Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.”

“When I am judging a theory, I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.”

“I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”

“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.”

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

“It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.”

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”

“The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.”

“That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

“I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.”

“Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”

“Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.”

“There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.”

“There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.”

“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”

“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”

“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.”

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

“I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind... to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein (1929)”

“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

“I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.”

“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

“The human spirit must prevail over technology.”

“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the World.”

“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”

“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.”

“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”

“God is subtle but he is not malicious.”

“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”

“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.”

“No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

“I want to know God's thoughts - the rest are mere details.”

“When the solution is simple, God is answering.”

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”