10 Inspiring Quotations: Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein is the most influential physicist of the 20th century, and just might be the most famous scientist to have ever lived. He was only 26 when in 1905, he had four separate papers published, electrifying the field of physics and rocketing him to global renown. Among them were his ground-breaking special theory of relativity, as well as his famous equation, E = mc², which asserted that matter could be turned into energy. Not since Isaac Newton had one man so drastically altered our understanding of how the universe works.
Yet while Einstein clearly had a knack for science and mathematics from an early age, he did not excel at everything he put his mind to. He went to elementary school and later grammar school in Munich, where he felt alienated and stifled by the school’s rigid pedagogical approach. He was an average pupil, and experienced speech challenges, which permanently influenced his view of education and human potential.
It was largely in his private time, in fact, that Einstein’s passion and inquisitiveness for science and mathematics first flourished. And after finishing his studies in Zurich in 1900, it was again in his leisure time, while working at the Swiss Patent Office as a young adult, that he developed many of his most influential theories.
Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921, but history would soon intervene. The Nazis were on the rise in his native Germany, and the Jewish-born Einstein was targeted for assassination. He moved to the United States in 1933, and worked at Princeton University in New Jersey for the rest of his days. There he became a central figure in the fight to curtail the use of the atom bomb, and a strong voice against racism and nationalism.
10 Inspiring Quotations: Albert Einstein
- “The value of achievement lies in the achieving.”
- “Long live impudence! It’s my guardian angel in this world.”
- “I always get by best with my naivety, which is 20 percent deliberate.”
- “A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”
- “Nothing truly valuable arises from ambitions or from a mere sense of duty; it seems rather from love and devotion towards men & toward objective things.”
- “Three rules of work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
- “I salute the man who is going through life always helpful, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressive and resentment are alien”
- “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”
- “On the mysterious: It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.”
- “The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance”
