Beauty can pierce one like pain.
Thomas Mann
1879 - 1955. German-born physicist, best known for his theory of relativity, he got Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
1. "Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."
Categories: Wisdom and Stupidity -:- Education
2. "What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?"
Categories: Nature and Animals -:- Knowledge, Ignorance
3. "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
Categories: Power and Weakness
4. "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."
Categories: Intellect, Judgement
5. "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
Categories: Nature and Animals -:- Wisdom and Stupidity
6. "Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value."
Categories: Various
7. "Truth is what stands the test of experience."
Categories: Truth and Falsity
8. "Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
Categories: History and Nations -:- Richness and Money
9. "Time is what a clock measures."
Categories: Time and Passing
10. "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Categories: Life and Death
11. "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."
Categories: Good and Evil
12. "The tragedy of life is what dies in the hearts and souls of people while they live."
Categories: Life and Death -:- Sorrow and Nostalgia
13. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
Categories: Talent and Genius
14. "The search for truth is more precious than its possession."
Categories: Truth and Falsity
15. "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking [...] the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
Categories: Human -:- Question and Problem
16. "The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
Categories: Beauty and Ugliness -:- Truth and Falsity
17. "The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me."
Categories: Science and Technology
18. "The most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile."
Categories: Nature and Animals -:- Science and Technology -:- Question and Problem
19. "The hardest thing to understand is why we can understand anything at all."
Categories: Intellect, Judgement
20. "The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax."
Categories: Authority, Government -:- Richness and Money
21. "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Categories: Wisdom and Stupidity -:- Talent and Genius
22. "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
Categories: Science and Technology
23. "Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality."
Categories: Science and Technology -:- Reality and Imagination
24. "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
Categories: Reality and Imagination
25. "Put your hand on a hot stove and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Categories: Various -:- Woman and Man
26. "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
Categories: Peace and War
27. "No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."
Categories: God and Religion
28. "Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
Categories: Authority, Government -:- Sin and Conscience
29. "Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size."
Categories: Nature and Animals -:- Science and Technology
30. "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."
Categories: Life and Death
31. "It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom."
Categories: Manners and Ethics
32. "It is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy."
Categories: Good and Evil
33. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Categories: Normality and Madness
34. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
Categories: Knowledge, Ignorance -:- Reality and Imagination
35. "If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. "
Categories: History and Nations -:- Science and Technology -:- Success and Fame
36. "If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z ; X is work, Y is play, and Z is keeping your mouth shut."
Categories: Oration and Silence -:- Success and Fame
37. "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details. "
Categories: God and Religion
38. "I never think of the future - it comes soon enough."
Categories: Time and Passing
39. "I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
Categories: Peace and War -:- Various
40. "God does not play dice with the universe."
Categories: God and Religion
41. "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."
Categories: Freedom and Servitude
42. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
Categories: Various
43. "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
Categories: Science and Technology -:- Education
44. "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination."
Categories: Human -:- Science and Technology
45. "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen."
Categories: Intellect, Judgement -:- Manners and Ethics
46. "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
Categories: God and Religion
47. "Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish."
Categories: God and Religion -:- Wisdom and Stupidity
48. "As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it."
Categories: Knowledge, Ignorance
49. "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Categories: Science and Technology -:- Reality and Imagination
50. "Any fool can know. The point is to understand."
Categories: Intellect, Judgement -:- Wisdom and Stupidity
51. "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."
Categories: Art and Culture -:- God and Religion -:- Science and Technology
52. "A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future."
Categories: Happiness -:- Time and Passing
53. "A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it."
Categories: Wisdom and Stupidity -:- Question and Problem
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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