Albert Einstein quotes about Religion and God
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Albert Einstein quotes - Best quotes of Einstein about God and Religion
Einstein saying about religion
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"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."
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God'S Thoughts"Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to form in the social life of man."
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"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."
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."
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"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them." ~ Albert Einstein, letter to Sigmund Freud, 30 July 1932
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"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."
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"When the solution is simple, God is answering."
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"The most important function of art and science is to
Awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive."
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"I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific
research."
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"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose
purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human
frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble
souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
~Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955
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"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience,
which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be
Buddhism...."
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"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."
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"The highest principles for our aspirations and judgements are given to us in the
Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we
can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspir ations and
valuations. If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its
purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the
individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind. ... it
is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve
rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any otherway."
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"Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws
of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist
will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish
addressed to a Supernatural Being."
Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray.
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"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties
and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be
restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
[Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930]
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"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."
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"Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. If one asks the
whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justifed
merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions,
which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgements of the individuals; they are there,
that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence.
They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the
medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense
their nature simply and clearly."
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"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is
shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."
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"It is only to the individual that a soul is given."
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"In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein
and the motives that have led them hither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of
superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid
experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who
have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an
angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the
temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both
present and past times, left inside"
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"In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep
oneself."
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"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are
directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and
leading the individual towards freedom."
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"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties
and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be
restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930
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"The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the
so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and
confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory
impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of
meaning."
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"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being
systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but
have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
~ Albert Einstein, 1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and
Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
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"I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic
organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and
everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation
in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to
any attempt to organize peace on this planet." [ letter, 1954]
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"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."
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"What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very
imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a
genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism"
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"The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all
art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of
wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenatrable for
us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose
gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is
the core of the true religious sent iment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself
amoung profoundly religious men."
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"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."
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"Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking
cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental
ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the i ndividual, seems to me
precisely the most important function which religion has to form in the social life of man."
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"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are
directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and
leading the individual towards freedom."
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"The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his
conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a
different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an
independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering
with the natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine
can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able
to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behaviour on the part of the representatives of
religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain
itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with
incalculable harm to human progress .... If it is one of the goals of religions to liberate
maknind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, s
cientific reasoning can aid religion in another sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of
science to discover (the) rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not
its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number
of mutually independent conceptual elements. It is in this striving after the rational
unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely
this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusion. But whoever
has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain, is moved by
the profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the
understanding he achieves a far reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes
and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason,
incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This
attitude, however, appears to me to be religious in the highest sense of the word. And so it
seems to me that science not only purifies the religious imulse of the dross of its
anthropomorphism but also contibutes to a religious spiritualisation of our understanding of
life."
~Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium", published by the
Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of
Life, Inc., New York, 1941
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"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." or sometimes quoted
as "God does not play dice with the universe."
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"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals,
or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of
the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, b een placed in doubt by modern
science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My
religiosity consists in a humble admiratation of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself
in the little that we, with our we ak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality.
Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."
~ Albert Einstein, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
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"If the possibility of the spiritual development of all individuals is to be secured, a second kind of outward freedom is necessary. The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit in general requires still another kind of freedom, which may be characterised as inward freedom. It is this freedom of the spirit which consists in the interdependence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices as well as from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy object for the individual."
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"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
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