Einstein was certainly very quotable. We’ve already mentioned his ‘God doesn’t play dice’ And some of the anecdotes about his exchanges are worth repeating, like the story of when Einstein and Chaim Weizmann (later to be President of Israel) were on the boat to NY from Europe, and Weizmann was asked ‘do you understand Einstein’s theory of relativity?’ to which Weizmann replied “Every day on the boat Albert has been explaining the theory to me and I am now completely convinced that He really understands it.” Then there was the student who came to one of Einstein’s lectures at Princeton, where he was explaining some very complex equations scribbled on a blackboard, and afterwards the student remarked “I sat in the balcony, but he talked right over my head anyway.”
Einstein was once asked “to what extent are you influenced by Christianity?” to which he replied “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.” The reporter then asked “You accept the historical existence of Jesus?” “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.” Then he was asked “Do you believe in God?” His reply was “I am not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they were written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is.That it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God…..That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.” (pp. 386-88, excerpts).
There is so much more to be gleaned from this vast biography, like there is from the vast universe, and I commend this fine scholarly work to you.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In