"If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."
Albert Einstein
Here are a few quotes by this brilliant man. Enjoy. You might find this is a keeper!
"The Religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will transcend
a personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural
and spiritual, it will based on a religious sense arising from the
experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity.
Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that can cope
with modern scientific needs, it is Buddhism.
ALBERT EINSTEIN, Ideas and Opinions
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten
the gift." -Albert Einstein
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few
persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and
the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this
completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of
the liberation and a foundation for inner security."
--Albert Einstein >>
What does the man of confidence say about ethics? That we should *believe*
in rewards in future lives or heavens? I don't think so. Albert says:
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment
and hope of reward after death." --Einstein, Albert
Does the man of confidence bow to religious authorities? Albert says:
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The
latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to
hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his
ntelligence." --Albert Einstein
Can science ultimately explain everything that occurs in the universe?
"Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." --Albert
Einstein
And are there any problems too complex for the human mind to comprehend?
"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." --Albert
Einstein
What about how to relate to the world spiritually?
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a
miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." --A. Einstein
And what does the man of confidence say about the ultimate or the infinite?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not
sure about the former." --Albert Einstein
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain
it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge."--Albert Einstein
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a
lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal
God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If
something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded
admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal
it."--Albert Einstein, 1954, from _Albert Einstein: The Human Side_,edited
by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton U Press
"The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein
lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling
is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of
fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenatrable for us really exists
and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this
knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious
sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself amoung
profoundly religious men."--Albert Einstein
Since you tend to share your enormous Buddhist sites list from time to time,
I'll give you my list of good sites for Einstein quotes:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html
http://www.humboldt1.com/~gralsto/einstein/quotes.html
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/einlinks.htm
http://www.netunlimited.net/~spike/einstein_quotes.htm
http://members.aol.com/levatino/equotes.html
And a good source of general Einstein links:
http://www.westegg.com/einstein/
"Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it,
even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." -Henry
David Thoreau
"The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets
the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient. They
needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be
aroused without myths and marvels." -Strabo (c. 58 B.C.--c. 24 A.D.), Greek
geographer
'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science.' - Albert Einstein
"The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the
rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no
more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences
consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the
concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of
meaning." -Albert Einstein
From: _Think on These Things_, by J. Krishnamurti, 1964.
True education is to learn *how* to think, not *what* to think. If you
know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free
human being -- free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies -- and therefore,
you can find out what religion is. Then what *is* religion? If you have
wiped the window clean --which means that you have actually stopped
performing ceremonies, given up all beliefs, cease to follow any leader or
guru --then your mind, like the window, is clean, polished, and you can see
out of it very clearly. When the mind is swept clean of image, or ritual, of
belief, of symbol, of all words, mantras, and repetitions, and of all fear,
then what you see will be the real, the timeless, the everlasting, which may
be called 'God' by some; but this requires enormous insight,
understanding, patience; and it is only for those who really *inquire* into
what is religion and pursue it day after day to the end. Only such people
will know what is true religion. The rest are merely mouthing words, and
all their ornaments and bodily decorations, their pujas and ringing of
bells -- all that is just superstition without any significance. It is only
when the mind is in revolt against all so-called religion that it finds the
real.
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in
the opposite direction."
-Albert Einstein
Cosmic Religious Feeling Albert Einstein Quantum Questions
"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
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the
sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in
the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison
and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The
beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of
development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the
Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned from the wonderful writings of
Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of
religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image;
so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it.
Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who
were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were, in many
cases, regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as
saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and
Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another
if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my
view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this
feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very
different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is
inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists,
and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the
universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain
the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events -- provided, of
course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has
no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral
religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the
simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and
internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an
inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has,
therefore, been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed
be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope
of reward after death.
It is, therefore, easy to see why the churches have always fought science
and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic
religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific
research. Only those who realize the immense effort and, above all, the
devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be
achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone
such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can
issue...
I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could
be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent
structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a
thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious
feeling that has *nothing* to do with mysticism. - Albert Einstein
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
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