A while back in an apartment Silvie would call “very college,” I had a huge poster of Albert Einstein and some of his most famous quotes. Every time my mom saw it, she’d say, “ah – it’s your father.” She knew of my fascination with his theories, philosophy on life, and even his own life story. I found affinity with his thoughts, a sense of community, great joy in reading about ideas that I, myself, had entertained in some form before but never could explain.
Much like a parent would, Einstein (long gone but present through his work and words) “supported” my own favorite theory – that science and spirituality (which he referred to as religion, a very common thing for his time) weren’t mutually exclusive arenas. He often talked about the “religious fervor” with which a true scientist took on his craft. He saw the mystical in the objective, respected forces beyond what physics could explain, and even credited a dream and imagination for one of his most important scientific contributions. He may not have been my biological father who passed on genes, but biology and genetics only determine a very small part of who we become. It is our minds – and their acquired content – that shape the speech, habits, and behavior that ultimately create our reality.
Since today is the birth of this blog and I always look for any reason to celebrate, especially with family, we’re going to gift ourselves a little bit of Einstein. Enjoy some of my favorite quotes and feel free to share some of yours.
“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.”
“The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
“I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true 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.”
“Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
“The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
“The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought.”
“Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality.”
“I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.”
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.”
Hello Celiz sisters!
You girls are rocking the web! I love the new website! Keep it up!
Yeeeh my favorite quotation is from Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
