If one asks the whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence.
Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? ... The simple answer runs: 'Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.'
Academic chairs are many, but wise and noble teachers are few; lecture-rooms are numerous and large, but the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small
Pablo Casals is a very great artist. What I admire is the firm stand he has taken not only against the oppressors of his countrymen, but also against those opportunists who are always ready to compromise with the Devil. He perceives clearly that the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.
Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.
[When asked "Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?"] That is simple, my friend. It is because politics is more difficult than physics.
An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information.