Albert Einstein Community Quotations

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will...Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.

We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.

The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life problem.

Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community.

It is important for the common good to foster individuality: for only the individual can produce the new ideas which the community needs for its continuous improvement and requirements - indeed, to avoid sterility and petrification

Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.

I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

...Intelligence and character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.

Only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community.

Of all the communities available to us, there is not one I would want to devote myself to except for the society of the true seekers, which has very few living members at any one time.

A man's value to the community primarily depends on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.