The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
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.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Life
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
I have just got a new theory of eternity.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.
Mathematics
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
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.
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
Love
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Love is a better teacher than duty.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
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.
Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
Science
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavours.
Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
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.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
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.
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
Thinking and Knowledge
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. Information is not knowledge.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will.
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
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.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
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.
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
The only source of knowledge is experience.
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
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.
