For all you fellow geeks out there, today is better than Mardi Gras (although there are substantially fewer readily-viewable boobies). It’s Albert Einstein’s birthday, in honor of which yer nerd-laden Congress has declared today National Pi Day!
Let’s remember Einstein now through his awesome wit and wisdom:
# “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
# “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
# “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
# “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
# “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
# “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
# “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
# “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
# “I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”
# “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
# “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
# “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
# “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
# “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
# “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
# “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
# “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
# “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
# “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
# “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
And here’s a special shout-out to the Blue Dog Dems who are about to demand a spending freeze:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Finally, a personal favorite:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
