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"Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualisation. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary."
"I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research."
"Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it."
"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium (1941) ch. 13
"The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder."
"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. "
"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science"
"When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Neverthess, noone doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact perdiction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature."
"Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is
determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people.
For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that
events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a
Supernatural Being."
[Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote
and asked if scientists pray. Source: "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", Edited
by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann]
"In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them hither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside"
"I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it."
"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."