“Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”
-Albert Einstein
On the shoulders of giants indeed. It requires from us our best efforts and cheerful acknowledgment.
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
-Albert Einstein
Whether it is science, religion, art, or philosophy, any method of perceiving reality can at best be an approximation. If it works most (some) of the time, great. But it is still just an approximation.
With certainty comes a much less interesting world. That’s the reality of it.
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
-Albert Einstein
Technology inherits no ideology, no affiliation, no morality. It is the domain of every human inclination, and merely amplifies whatever is applied to it.
Use with caution.
geralt / Pixabay
“If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”
-Albert Einstein
When in doubt, tell the truth; but don’t expect it to always be easy.
“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.
As much as Congress seems intent on weighing in on matters beyond its control – from MoveOn.org to Rush Limgaugh – it serves no purpose than to engender intolerance. A muddling of what freedom of expression really means – a sign of the times.
One or the other may be repugnant (and in fact, one is – the one that smokes a cigar – but that’s just my opinion).
Freedom of public expression does have its limits. But those limits should never be any one ideology’s – or idealogue’s – comfort zone.
Freedom hurts. Get over it. Not everybody is going to be just like you. Or me.
Thank God.
“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.
“For the most part we humans live with the false impression of security and a feeling of being at home in a seemingly trustworthy physical and human environment. But when the expected course of everyday life is interrupted, we are like shipwrecked people on a miserable plank in the open sea, having forgotten where they came from and not knowing whither they are drifting. But once we fully accept this, life becomes easier and there is no longer any disappointment.”
-Albert Einstein, letter, 26 April, 1945
Every day that affords the opportunity to sit in quiet reflection at the end of the day, with a sense of relative safety and, if we are especially fortunate, love, is another day of truly beating the odds; on a scale nearly as enormous as the universe in which the mote of dust, which we call the earth, spins and swings around its lonely star.
Life is easier when approached from gratitude and not entitlement.
“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.
It’s an insane world. Nothing will change that until we change the way we think.
“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
How many times have you wanted to slap someone upside the head who responds with; “Like – whatever”
Such laziness and disrespect implied in such a phrase soon becomes more than an expression of attitude, but of character as well.
“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.
Filtering science through moralistic dogma, political agenda, or simple delusion dooms what we would call “science”, and therefore the pursuit of knowledge, to ultimate failure. Knowledge is not advanced and human progress is diminished.
If we are not willing to follow in the path that knowledge takes us, we have no choice but to turn back toward the cave from which we came.