Einstein on Militarism, Patriotism, War

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

from "The World As I See It," 1933

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.

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

Einstein on Social Justice

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude...

from "The World As I See It," 1931

Einstein on Materialism

The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

from "The World As I See It," 1931

Einstein on Religion

"If the believers of the present-day religions would earnestly try to think and act in the spirit of the founders of these religions, then no hostility on the basis of religion would exist among the followers of the different faiths. Even the conflicts in the realm of religion would be exposed as insignificant."

Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 150

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Like So Many Humanists

Like so many humanists, Einstein's relationships to those people closest to him were often less than humane. I just finished reading the insightful EINSTEIN IN LOVE by Dennis Overbye. He writes: From a distance, the trajectory of Einstein’s life looks mythic. The one-time humble patent clerk, with his corona of white hair and the haunted eyes, who overturned the universe and gave us the formula for God’s fire, who was chased by war and promethean guilt to wander sockless like a holy fool through the streets of Princeton, making oracular pronouncements about God and nature, has become an icon not just of science but of humanity in the face of the unknown. His visage, peering beneficently out at us from coffee mugs, posters, calendars, and T-shirts, is familiar in every corner of the world. Behind the iconic face, however, was a human being, one capable – as all human beings are- of behaving in distinctly un-iconic ways.

Some things aren’t relative: Einstein was an atheist

Some things aren’t relative: Einstein was an atheist

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