The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)
Interpretation
Einstein suggests that while technology has advanced, human thought and morality have not kept pace with these changes.
In this quote, Albert Einstein reflects on the profound implications of the discovery of atomic power, emphasizing that despite the revolutionary changes in technology, humanity's way of thinking and ethical considerations remain largely unchanged. He implies that the real challenges lie within human nature and its ability to handle the consequences of its own inventions responsibly. The reference to wanting to become a watchmaker indicates a desire for precision and craft over the chaotic and dangerous power of atomic energy.
In practice
In a discussion about technological advancements and their ethical implications, one could say, 'As Einstein pointed out, the release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking.'
I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science.
If I would follow your advice and Jesus could perceive it, he, as a Jewish teacher, surely would not approve of such behavior.
I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.
In the middle of adversity there is great opportunity.
I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject.
I think that people in the Bible Belt are far less monolithically religious than many people imagine. There are lots and lots of people who are free-thinking, secularists, or atheists in the so-called Bible Belt.
Zionism itself has paradoxically come to adopt some antisemitic logic in its hatred of Jews who do not fully identify with the politics of the state of Israel. Their target, the figure of the Jew who doubts the Zionist project, is constructed in the same way as the European antisemites constructed the figures of the Jew β he is dangerous because he lives among us, but is not really one of us.
Human history is a Gaian dream.
Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.
To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.
Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of 'our institutions' unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.
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