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These quotations were primarily taken from an Einstein
biography by by Albrecht Fölsing, and translated by Ewald
Osers.
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Nature is showing us only the tail of the lion. But I
have no doubt that the lion belongs to it, even though,
because of its colossal dimensions, it cannot directly
reveal itself to the beholder.
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Albert Einstein, 1914,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 321
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At such a time as this, one realizes what a sorry species
of animal one belongs to. I doze along quietly with my
musings and only experience a mixture of pity and
revulsion.
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Albert Einstein, 1914,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 343
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The international catastrophe weighs heavily on me as an
internationalist person. It is hard to understand, as one
lives through this great epoch, that one belongs to
this crazy degenerate species that claims to possess
freedom of will. If only somewhere there were an island
for the benign and prudent. There I too would be fervent
patriot.
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Albert Einstein, 1914,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 347
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Even the scholars of the different countries act as if
eight months ago they had their cerebrum amputated.
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Albert Einstein, 1915,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 350
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This country has developed a religion of power through the
success of its arms in 1870 and through its successes in
trade and industry. … This religion dominates
nearly all educated people; it has almost totally replaced
the ideals of Goethe’s and Schiller’s time.
I am firmly convinced that this delusion of minds can be
checked only by the harshness of reality. The people must
be shown that it is necessary to show consideration for
non-Germans as persons of equal worth, and that it is
necessary to earn the trust of foreign countries in order
to live, that with brute force and perfidy one does not
reach the goals one has set oneself.
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Albert Einstein, 22 August 1917,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 414
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Then down to the Temple Wall (Wailing Wall), where
dull-minded tribal companions are praying, faces turned to
the wall, rocking their bodies forward and back. A
pitiful sight of men with a past but without a future.
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Albert Einstein, diary, 3 February 1923,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 529
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The devil take the big states and their madness. I’d cut
them up into small ones if I had the power to do it.
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Albert Einstein, 22 April 1925,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 550
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If anyone can take pleasure in marching to music in line,
dressed by the right, then I already despise him; he only
received his brain in error, as his spine would be quite
sufficient for him.
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Albert Einstein, 1930,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 619
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No person has the right to call himself a Christian or a
Jew so long as he is prepared, at the command of an
authority, to engage in systematic murder or to allow
himself to be misued in any way whatever in the service of
such an enterprise or the preparation for it.
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Albert Einstein, 1928,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 621
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If on occasion you see my name linked with political
excursions, don’t think that I spend a lot of time on such
matters, for it would be a ptiy to waste much strength on
the arid soil of politics. But now and again comes
a moment when one can’t do anything else.
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Albert Einstein, , 21 April 1946,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 724
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I believe that the terrible decline in man’s ethical
behavior is due primarily to the mechanization and
depersonalization of our lives—a disastrous
by-product of the development of the
technological-scientific intellect. Nostra culpa! I see
no way of dealing with this fatal shortcoming. Man cools
more quickly than planet he inhabits.
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Albert Einstein, 11 April 1946,
quoted in Albert Einstein,
by Albrecht Fölsing, translated by Ewald Osers, p. 726
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