Albert Einstein Quotes on Religion

7/28/2019 Albert Einstein Quotes on Religion

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Albert Einstein Quotes on

ReligionThe most beautiful and most profound experience is the

sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true

science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can

no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as

dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really

exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the

most radiant beauty which our dull faculties cancomprehend only in their primitive forms - this

knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true

religiousness. (Albert Einstein- The Merging of Spirit

and Science)

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It

should transcend personal God and avoid dogma andtheology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it

should be 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 could cope with modern

scientific needs it would be Buddhism. (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


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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 HelenDukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything

that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and

therefore this holds for the action of people. For this

reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to

believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e.by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being. (Albert

Einstein, 1936) Responding to a child who wrote and

asked if scientists pray. Source: Albert Einstein: The

Human Side, Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh

Hoffmann

A man's ethical behaviour 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. (Albert

Einstein, Religion and Science, New York Times Magazine,

9 November 1930

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes hiscreatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in

ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of

an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble

souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such


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thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the

eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of

the marvelous structure of the existing world, together

with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be itever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in

nature. (Albert Einstein, The World as I See It)

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the

objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled

after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection

of human frailty. Neither can I believe that theindividual survives the death of his body, although feeble

souls harbour such thoughts through fear or ridiculous

egotisms. (Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times,

19 April 1955)

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the

orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who

concerns himself with the fates and actions of human

beings. (Albert Einstein) Following his wife's advice in

responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the

International Synagogue in New York, who had sent

Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding Do you believe in

God? Quoted from and citation notes derived from

Victor J. Stenger, Has Science Found God? (draft:2001), chapter 3.

One strength of the Communist system ... is that it has

some of the characteristics of a religion and inspires the


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emotions of a religion. (Albert Einstein, Out Of My Later

Years, 1950)

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Albert Einstein Quotes on Religion