Albert Einstein Quotes About Community
-
I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.
→ -
Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
→ -
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
→ -
It is important for the common good to foster individuality: for only the individual can produce the new ideas which the community needs for its continuous improvement and requirements - indeed, to avoid sterility and petrification
→ -
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
→ -
Of all the communities available to us, there is not one I would want to devote myself to except for the society of the true seekers, which has very few living members at any one time.
→ -
Capitalism creates a huge community of producers who are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor, and an oligarchy that cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized society....the subjugation is not by force but because the privileged class has long ago established a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.
→ -
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
→ -
Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community.
→ -
We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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.
→ -
One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
→ -
Communities tend to be guided less than individuals by conscience and a sense of responsibility. How much misery does this fact cause mankind! It is the source of wars and every kind of oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs and bitterness.
→ -
With all my heart I believe that the world's present system of sovereign nations can only lead to barbarism, war and inhumanity, and that only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community.
→ -
One has a feeling that one has a kind of home in this timeless community of human beings that strive for truth. ... I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people.
→ -
A man's value to the community primarily depends on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.
→ -
...Intelligence and character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.
→ -
A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs.
→ -
For the moral attitudes of a people that is supported by religion need always aim at preserving and promoting the sanity and vitality of the community and its individuals, since otherwise this community is bound to perish. A people that were to honour falsehood, defamation, fraud, and murder would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long.
→ -
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.
→ -
Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
→ -
Only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community.
→ -
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.
→ -
I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will...Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.
→ -
Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
→ -
We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.
→ -
The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life problem.
→
Albert Einstein
- Born: March 14, 1879
- Died: April 18, 1955
- Occupation: Theoretical Physicist