“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.
Nobody wants Iran to get the Bomb (except, perhaps, Iran), but the irony of a policy position endorsing a nuclear strike of any kind in order to prevent nuclear technology from spreading only brings closer the scenario Einstein lays out in this quote.
Much to Einstein’s horror, the genie is out of the bottle. No simple-minded Manichean worldview will ever get it back in or make the world safer from the consequences of it being set loose in the first place.
Read my essay at ProperlyChastised.com: Nuclear Weapons Will Save Us From Nuclear Weapons
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
-Albert Einstein
Of course, Albert said this long before the days of cell phones, blackberries, and GPS.
How disappointed he would be that our attention is often on neither driving or kissing the pretty girl.
Are we a society with mass Attention Deficit Disorder?
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
-Albert Einstein
Sitting in judgment of Truth and Knowledge is for fools and impostors.
“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
The irony in Albert Einstein’s claim that too much reading (albeit “after a certain age”) created lazy mental habits is poignant , considering the state of our current world of cell phones, television, and computer games (though I’m sure there are many that would argue that “gaming” is anything but mentally lazy).
For a man that sat and thought, and in so doing came up with E=mc2, what would he think of our current state of distraction? From the moment we get up in the morning, to the time we lay back down, it is possible to never have a moment with your own, uninterrupted thoughts.
What could we accomplish if we turned off the television, shut down the computer, switched off the cell phone, and for an hour just sat with our own thoughts?
Or is the thought too frightening?
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
-Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein learned pacifism at an early age, renouncing his German citizenship as a teenager through his abhorrence of the country’s growing militarism.
Pointing a gun at someone's head will never engender peace. Putting the gun down and listening just might.
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"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
-Albert Einstein
A vocation in which you are competent, an avocation that you love, and the wisdom to avoid idle gossip and boorish boasting. This must surely lead to success.
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"It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."
-Albert Einstein
Science is the trees, music is the forest.
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"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age."
-Albert Einstein
Our clever minds thrive on technology. From taming fire to taming the atom.
With each step along the way, a commensurate advance in wisdom is required to justly apply the increased power that is made available for our use.
Somewhere along the way, and certainly by the time a mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima, our cleverness far outstripped our wisdom to use it.
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"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"
-Albert Einstein
It was with little more than this that Einstein paved an entirely new road for the rest of humanity to trod behind.
The simple things is life are often the best and allow the mind free reign, without distraction, to explore the universe.
Albert Einstein's brain wasn’t your average run-of-the-mill brain. It’s still around somewhere; some say it’s in a small-town doctor’s office in Kansas, in a mason jar tucked in a cardboard box behind behind a beer cooler.
One hopes the good doctor wasn’t partaking of the beer while examining patients. If that sounds far-fetched, well, Steven Levy swears it’s true. And in fact, it does appear to be true.
Most people’s brains don’t matter for much after the rest of them has left this mortal coil. Some people never really learn how to work their brain very well even while alive.
Whatever it was that sparked such a far-reaching imagination, driven by intellectual genius, will remain an unanswered question.
It wasn’t his education that led Einstein to his discovery of space, time, and the nature of light beams; it was his imagination. He was able to envision the world in ways the even today most of us can’t really imagine.
Try imagining riding alongside a beam of light and then writing down an equation that describes it. One that works. One that scientists who at first scoffed finally had to admit that it was provable reality.
Einstein seemed destined to follow his path toward relative fame, if you’ll indulge and forgive my bad pun.
He was actually a media star, and still is. His name and likeness are the very defination of the eccentric genius scientist.
It was Newton that said if he had “seen further than other men”, it was because he “stood on the shoulders of giants” – and thus became a giant himself. Einstein surely stood on these shoulders and those of others, looking beyond what anyone had dared, or could, imagine before.
It is impossible not to be intriqued and drawn not only to the work, but also the character of a man like Albert Einstein. He was a scientist-philosopher and he left behind not only his scientific vision of the universe, but also his philosophical view of the world we live in.
It’s been a little over 50 years since Einstein died, and his vision – both universal and human – are as vital today as they will be tomorrow and as they were when he first spoke them; irrespective of time.
Get it?
I’m not sure I do either, but it will be fun to try. Thus starts the next effort in the History Blog project, where the words of great humans of the past are applied to the present.
My humble attempt to climb onto the shoulders of giants and try to get a peek at what they saw.
I am sure to stumble, but I’m going to do it anyway, and announce the start of AlbertEinsteinBlog.org. I’ll have fun and I hope you may find it amusing as well.
