Albert Einstein Quotes

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.

Principles are the territory. Values are maps.

The things best to know are first principles and causes, but these things are perhaps the most difficult for men to grasp, for they are farthest removed from the senses.

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

The problems of philosophy and the systems designed to solve them are formulated in terms which tend to refer, not to the realm of actuality, but to the realms of possibility and necessity: to what might be and what must be, rather than to what is.

God pity the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity, he does.

Modern science has its value in terms of utility, but it cannot open up existence to human experience.

Philosophy is the sum total of all that you know and what you decide is valuable.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.

I'm not a philosopher.

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.

Philosophy is true mother of the arts [of science].

Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.

Science, by itself, cannot supply us with an ethic. It can show us how to achieve a given end, and it may show us that some ends cannot be achieved.

Most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great scientists submit religion to reason only to discover a problem as unsolvable as that of squaring a circle.

In real science a hypothesis can never be proved true...A science which confines itself to correlating phenomena can never learn anything about the reality underlying the phenomena, while a science which goes further than this and introduces hypotheses about reality, can never acquire certain knowledge of a positive kind about reality; in whatever way we proceed, this is forever denied us.

The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.

What's a philosopher?' said Brutha. Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.

You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.

Both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, and to the latter the goal of every thought process. To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.

in the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.

Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.