Einstein led an eccentric, contradictory private life

[dArKeR]

A half-century after announcing his theory of relativity, physicist Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey, the small university town that had been his home for the last 22 years of his life.

A ruptured artery in his stomach caused him to bleed to death at the age of 76 on April 18, 1955.

Shortly afterward, all bodily traces of the most famous scientist in history disappeared. A pathologist at Princeton's municipal hospital took his brain and hid it away for decades, while his stepdaughter, Margot, spread his ashes over a secret place in accordance with his wishes.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/04/17/2003250812

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. He was also a pacifist

and regretted the atom bomb until the day he died.

[pacifictiger]

7. I read somewhere that he wrote

in his autobiography
"If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism."

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Here ya go

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

* "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

* "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."

* "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

* "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

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

* "The only real valuable thing is intuition."

* "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."

* "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."

* "God is subtle but he is not malicious."

* "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."

* "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

* "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

* "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."

* "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

* "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

* "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."

* "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

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

* "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."

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

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

* "God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."

* "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

* "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

* "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

* "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."

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

* "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."

* "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

* "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

* "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."

* "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."

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

* "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

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

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

* "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."

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

* "Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."

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

* "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?"

* "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

* "Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."

* "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

* "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."

* "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."

* "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."

* "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."

* "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understandthis? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

* "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."

* "...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."

* "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."

* "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

[ixion]

15. thanks for the quotes!

Since I was a kid, Einstein has been one of my all-time favorite human beings. :-)

[cprise]

16. "Why Socialism?" by Albert Einstein

...

"Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word "society.""
...

http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm

[Selteri]

2. Einstien was a randy ol' coot, good for him. N/T

[Maple]

3. We should be celebrating the life and genius

of Mileva Maric instead.

[lenidog]

4. Unless someone builds a time machine that battle will go one forever

between scientists and historians.

[Maple]

5. No, it's pretty obvious

Historians and scientists however are very good at overlooking the obvious when it's in their interests to do so

[lenidog]

6. I don't know I have heard and read three arguments and each have

a good body of evidence behind them. One, that she was nothing but a sounding board. Two, he had the ideas and she did the math. Three, the worked 50/50. I lean towards the last two but haven't made up my mind yet.

[Maple]

9. She was brighter than he was

but had the misfortune of being female.

He only had the one good year...when he was with her.

Had he collaborated with a man that much, there would be no question.

Einstein was never as 'bright' again.

[aeolian]

14. "one good year?"

Are the equivalence principal, general relativity, radiative absorption/decay rates, and the statistical descriptions of integer-spin particles insignificant?

[Jamastiene]

8. I've always admired Einstein for his genius.

I understand that he was human and fallible though. And there are posters with an Einstein quote that said, "Whatever your difficulties with mathematics, I can assure you that mind are greater." He basically admitted that he wasn't a great mathemetician. It's encouraging to those of us who want to invent something but basically suck at math. I once heard that he never wore socks because he couldn't understand the concept of how elastic worked. He couldn't figure out how to put them on. It goes back to what my mother says about me sometimes. She seems to think I am a genius with no common sense. She says if it is not rocket science I cannot grasp it and she doesn't understand why. I'm not a genius, but I do relate to people who don't understand the simple things in life. Others take it for granted and believe everyone understands. We don't. I have never mastered the art of dealing with Saran Wrap and can't understand why it was even invented. :P

[Maple]

10. Einstein wore socks

and you can deal with Saran wrap.

[Jamastiene]

11. How?

It has a mind of it's own. And I could swear it tries to attack me every time I try to deal with it. I can use tin foil or a lid or even paper towels or parafin wax. Why bother with Saran Wrap when it's such a nightmare to deal with? :P

[thereismore]

13. Einstein had a great year, 1905, but

in all honesty, 1915 (December, General Relativity) was even more titanic. I won't go into details, but it is this theory that is far more mathematically demanding than the Special Relativity (1905). He really muscled that one with the power of his mind and determination. Mileva was out of the picture by then. She may have been brilliant, too, but Einstein was a powerhouse of intuition. Even after 1915, in the US, he was on the right track with multi-dimensional field theory, but he was so much ahead of the times that it was impossible to finish the theory - too abstract for the time.