Quotes — Emotions and Feelings

Albert Einstein

Autobiographies mostly arise out of narcissism or negative feelings toward others. Biographies from the pen of another person tend in their psychological traits to reflect the intellectual and spiritual nature of the writer more than that of the person portrayed.

This quote from 1942 would end up in the forward of Philipp Frank’s Einstein biography. The scientist never wrote an autobiography.

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Albert Einstein

Sometimes one pays most for things one gets for nothing.

This comes from a 1929 interview in the Saturday Evening Post.

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Albert Einstein

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to think too much about the future.

Einstein was just 17 when he wrote this in a school essay called “My Future Plans.”

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Albert Einstein

The crime of the Germans is truly the most abominable ever to be recorded in the history of the so-called civilized nations. The conduct of the German intellectuals—seen as a group—was no better than that of the mob.

Again, Einstein sees no reason to let the intelligentsia off the hook for the actions of their governments. This quote comes from 1949, and Einstein never forgave Germany or the Germans for the Holocaust and World War II.

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Albert Einstein

I hardly ever felt as alienated from people as I do right now… The worst is that nowhere is there anything with which one can identify. Brutality and lies are everywhere.

This quote comes from 1950, duing the time period in which Eugene McCarthy’s Communist witch-hunt era was firing up. Einstein was considered a political dissident by some for his support of socialism, civil rights, and nuclear disarmament.

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Albert Einstein

The conscientious objector is a revolutionary. In deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.

Einstein advocated refusing military service, as well as other disobedience, on moral grounds.

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Albert Einstein

I’m doing just fine, considering that I have triumphantly survived Nazism and two wives.

Einstein always cherished humor no matter how he felt or what was going on in the world. – 1952

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Albert Einstein

I have now been promoted to an “evil monster” in Germany, and all my money has been taken away from me. But I console myself with the thought that the latter would soon be gone, anyway.

From 1933, the year German authorities seized Einstein’s bank account.

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Albert Einstein

I have now been promoted to an “evil monster” in Germany, and all my money has been taken away from me. But I console myself with the thought that the latter would soon be gone, anyway.

From 1933, the year German authorities seized Einstein’s bank account.

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Albert Einstein

Funny people, these Germans. To them I am a stinking flower, yet they make me into a boutonniere time and time again.

This was taken from Einstein’s travel diary in 1925.

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Albert Einstein

Like the man in the fairytale who turned everything he touched into gold, so with me everything is turned into newspaper clamor.

In speaking to a friend in 1920, Einstein of course was referring to the myth of King Midas. As the legend goes, King Midas eventually hated and cursed his power to turn everything he touched into gold. Einstein himself detested the limelight that his fame brought him.

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Albert Einstein

I’ve been so preoccupied with what would happen in the event of my death that I’m surprised to find myself still alive.

Einstein references the estate paperwork for his family’s inheritance, which had preoccupied him in 1918.

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Albert Einstein

She knows her way around the family of radioactive substances better than I know the way around my own family.

Einstein was Speaking of Austrian physicist Lise Meitner (1878–1968), who was part of a team that discovered nuclear fission. He had also called Meitner the “German Marie Curie.”

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Albert Einstein

I lived in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in maturity.

In this written statement from 1936, Einstein again expresses his fondness for living and working in peace and quiet, away from distraction.

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Albert Einstein

In the past it never occurred to me that every casual remark of mine would be snatched up and recorded. Otherwise I would have crept further into my shell.

Einstein told this to biographer Carl Seelig 1953, near the end of his life.

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Albert Einstein

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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Albert Einstein

I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude—a feeling which increases over the years.

This quote is from the book The World As I See It , under the section The World As I See It.

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Albert Einstein

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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Albert Einstein

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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Albert Einstein

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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Albert Einstein

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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Albert Einstein

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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Albert Einstein

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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Albert Einstein

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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