"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
-Albert Einstein
Across a nation an entire population grapples with their own understanding of what even Einstein found baffling: April 15th.
“Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them”
-Albert Einstein
Many a smart and diligent intellect may apply itself to the resolution crisis. It is to the avoidance of such that true genius lies.
Read more on On the Difference Between Being Smart and Being a Genius…
“The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope — we must hope — that man’s own creation, man’s own genius, will not destroy him. Scholars, indeed all men, must move forward in the faith of that philosopher who held that there is no problem the human reason can propound which the human reason cannot reason out.”
-Albert Einstein
“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
-Albert Einstein
And if you don’t understand it by now, be prepared to pull an all-nighter figuring it out.
“Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”
-Albert Einstein
Law, after all, is an expression of the human mind, not, necessarily, of the human heart.
Read more on On Tolerating Freedom – A Crisis in American Culture…
“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
-Albert Einstein
Even the most enlightened among us are, for the most part, products of their environment and the society in which they live. Maintaining an open mind and forming unbiased opinions is not only very difficult, it is the rarest of commodities in an increasingly divisive world – whether it left vs. right, rich vs. poor, or one “true religion” vs. any other.
“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”
-Albert Einstein
It has been called the true indication of madness: doing a thing over and over and expecting a different result. And so it is in expecting solutions to the problems that plague us to derive from a mentality that fostered the problems in the first place.
“The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life.”
-Albert Einstein
Science is the unfettered pursuit of pure knowledge. An ideal that can never be fully realized as even the most open human mind – the mind of an Einstein – carries with it the inevitable traces of personal bias. But we can maintain that ideal nonetheless.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
-Albert Einstein
At a recent debate, the Republican contenders for president, save one – Ron Paul of Texas – either explicitly or implicitly supported the use of a “tactical” nuclear strike against Iran should we find the need to prevent Iran from acquiring equipment, such as a centrifuge, needed to build a nuclear weapon.
