Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify. . . . This kind of inquisition violates the spirit of the Constitution. If enough people are ready to take this grave step they will be successful. If not, then the intellectuals of this country deserve nothing better than the slavery which is intended for them.

I do not know [how the Third World War will be fought]. But I can tell you what they’ll use in the fourth—rocks!

As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.

[ On quantum theory :] It is hard to sneak a look at God’s cards. But that he would choose to play dice with the world . . . is something I cannot believe for a single moment.

We know nothing about it [God and the world] at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. Possibly we shall know a little more than we do now. But the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never.

Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster.

Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we shall have learned nothing from our 2,000 years of suffering and will deserve our fate.

Quantum mechanics is very worthy of regard. But an inner voice tells me that this is not yet the right track. The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One’s secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that He does not play dice.

I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will , not only its moment to jump off, but also its direction. In that case I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming-house, than a physicist.

To-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire , the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!