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You are surprised, aren’t you, at the contrast between my fame throughout the world… and the isolation and quiet in which I live here. I wished for this isolation all my life, and now I have finally achieved it here in Princeton.

This quote comes from Philipp Frank’s book, Einstein, His Life and Times . Einstein landed a job at Princeton University in 1933, where he stayed until his death in 1955. Once Hitler took control of Germany in 1933, Einstein bounced around Europe for several months before settling in Princeton, New Jersey. He never returned to Germany.

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My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.

This quote is from the book The World As I See It , under the section The World As I See It. Einstein preferred to love his neighbor from afar.

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I hate my pictures. Look at my face. If it weren’t for this [mustache], I’d look like a woman!

The date of this quote is not known, but Einstein was talking to photographer Alan Richards sometime during his elderly years. Richards later quoted him in a book.

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Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?

Speaking to the New York Times in 1944, this question sums up Einstein’s lifelong bewilderment with his public perception.

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I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

In 1952, at the age of 73, Einstein still worked and still had his thirst for knowledge, but his most productive days were far behind him.

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My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born, and that is all that is necessary.

Einstein gave this answer to a Princeton High School reporter in 1935. Speaking from experience, I can say that this is exactly the kind of answer that will cause a high school journalist to panic.

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It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.

This comes from Einstein’s essay, “Impressions of the U.S.A.” from 1931. Because Einstein felt his own talents were exaggerated in the public eye, he bemoaned the same thing happening to undeserving world leaders and other public figures.

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With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.

This 1919 quote reflects the classic Einstein tendencies to both discount his own intelligence and prefer to be left alone. He thought that people’s overestimation of his intellect lead to an undeserved fame, with people constantly demanding his time and hanging on his every word. He always preferred to be left in solitude to work.

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Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.

In 1908, Einstein was still just a 29-year-old wunderkind in the scientific world, who three years earlier has changed everything in theoretical physics with a series of papers that laid out his theory of relativity. This quote was said to Arnold Sommerfeld, a German physicist who received 81 Nobel prize nominations in his lifetime.

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Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn a living at it. One should earn one’s living by work of which one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anyone can we find joy in scientific endeavor.

Einstein said this to a student in California in 1951.

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