I am a real lone wolf who has never wholeheartedly belonged to the State, to my country, my circle of friends and not even to my family but who, despite all these bonds, has constantly experienced a feeling of strangeness and the need for solitude.

Although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.

I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family. These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness, and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years.

Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up.

It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault or merit of my own.

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working.

Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty.

An awareness of my limitations pervades me all the more keenly in recent times because my faculties have been quite overrated since a few consequences of general relativity theory have stood the test.

The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.

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.

Failure and deprivation are the best educators and purifiers.

I do not much believe in education. Each man ought to be his own model, however frightful that may be.

The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.

Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.

That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.

The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.

Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn the liberating beauty of the intellect for your own personal joy and for the profit of the community to which your later work will belong.

Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn the liberating beauty of the intellect for your own personal joy and for the profit of the community to which your later work will belong.

It is true that my parents were worried because I began to speak relatively late, so much so that they consulted a doctor. I can’t say how old I was then, certainly not less than three.

In the matter of physics [education], the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see.

When I was a little boy my father showed me a small compass, and the enormous impression that it made on me certainly played a role in my life.

Young people especially like to contemplate bold projects. Also, it is natural for a serious young man to envision his desired goals with the greatest possible precision.

The students at our universities have ceased as completely as their teachers to enshrine the hopes and ideals of the nation.

Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice.

When compared to six years’ schooling at a German authoritarian gymnasium, it made me clearly realize how much superior an education based on free action and personal responsibility is to one relying on outward authority.

This is quite natural: everybody likes to do that for which he has a talent.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.

Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism.

Imagination is the highest form of research.

I salute the man who is going through life always helpful, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien. 

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. 

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.

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

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been truth, goodness, and beauty.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.

The only thing I did was this: in long intervals I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to me so bad and unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.

I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.

I believe in intuition and inspiration. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.

The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

A little knowledge is dangerous. So is a lot.