uncle albert (mostly)

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.

Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Force always attracts men of low morality. Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love .

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt.

He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

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

Information is not knowledge.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

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

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.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

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

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

The faster you go, the shorter you are.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

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.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there. (and no proof is needed)

True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

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

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

"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?"

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

‘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."

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

"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."

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."

"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

"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."

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

nyuk,

nyuk,

narf.