“What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?”
-Albert Einstein
Is it possible for a fish to swim its entire life and never know of the ocean?
If so, does it make you wonder what you’re missing, swimming through your own life?
“The individual, if left alone from birth would remain primitive and beast-like in his thoughts and feelings to a degree that we can hardly conceive. The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so much in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave”
-Albert Einstein
You’re reading this and I’m writing it. Neither one of us matter without the other.
“Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.”
-Albert Einstein
To get inside the box, you begin outside it. Innovation is what happens outside the box.
“Liberty is the necessary foundation for the development of all true values”
-Albert Einstein
Without the freedom of mind and spirit, human values grind under the weight of oppression and want.
“We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”
-Albert Einstein
And, nonetheless, we delight in the eternal mystery with joyful curiosity and a determination to unravel the revelation as best we possibly can.
Einstein’s vision of the world and the universe encompasses the boundary of human imagination. The point where the science of the empirical world intersects with the faith in the spiritual dimension that lies beyond our limited perception. However limited, Einstein stretched that boundary, for which we are eternally grateful. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Albert Einstein takes a break
The Albert Einstein blog will continue the first week of March. In the meantime, in the spirit of Einstein, let’s all stretch.
Stay curious.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
-Albert Einstein
A true education is the sum total of what you know, not everything you’ve been taught.
“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind.”
-Albert Einstein
Mystery is the reflected nature of beauty, and the beauty reflected in nature. It is what calls the human spirit to a higher calling.
It is the salvation of humanity.
“Is it possible to control man’s mental evolution so as to make him secure proof against the the psychosis of hate and destructiveness?”
-Albert Einstein, posing a question to Sigmund Freud
Freud’s reply to Einstein was not encouraging, and humanity has yet to prove him wrong.
“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations.
He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions.
He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.”
-Albert Einstein
There is truth, it is our nature and obligation to seek it. But its true nature lies just beyond the veil of perception.
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
-Albert Einstein, letter to son Eduard, 1930
A life in motion is one of ongoing intellectual curiosity, loving relationships the deepen through the years, and a growing sense of community. Curiosity, love, and selflessness.
With that, if we are lucky, we can maintain balance and find some modicum of wisdom and maturity.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-Albert Einstein