''The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist,'' he said. ''I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.''
Albert Einstein
"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty -- it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves ... Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."
I emerged from these discussions with a new sense of Albert Einstein -- not just as a great mind, but as a wise man. He was fully human and flawed, certainly in his intimate relationships. But he was undeniably an original, and not just as a scientist. If past, present, and future are an illusion, as he said, none of us ever really disappear. We all leave our imprint on what is now. I have a profound sense of Einstein's imprint, and it comforts me. I suspect that if he heard he was the subject of a program called Speaking of Faith more than fifty years after his death, he would make a funny, kindly, self-deprecating joke. But if he could listen with twenty-first-century ears, he might be intrigued by how his generous, questioning, "cosmic" religious sense is deeply kindred with the religious and spiritual yearnings of our age.
This post is excerpted from her book Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit
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''Imagination is more important than knowledge,'' Einstein said.
''The important thing is to not stop questioning.''
''Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something,'' Einstein once said, ''wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.''
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