

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
Letter to Morris Raphael Cohen · 1940
19 March 1940, defending the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a teaching position
Traced to Letter to Morris Raphael Cohen (1940).
More from Albert Einstein
“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”
Albert Einstein
The New York Times · 1921
verified“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
Albert Einstein
Science and Religion · 1941
verified“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.”
Albert Einstein
The World As I See It · 1949
verified“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
Albert Einstein
Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson · 1943
verified“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
Albert Einstein
The New York Times · 1932
verified“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
Albert Einstein
Death of a Genius, LIFE magazine · 1955
verifiedMore Perseverance quotes
“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
Helen Keller
The Simplest Way to be Happy · 1933
verified“No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Helen Keller
Helen Keller's Journal · 1938
verified“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”
Helen Keller
We Bereaved · 1929
verified“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
You Learn by Living · 1960
verified“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Harijan · 1947
verified“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
Mahatma Gandhi
The Doctrine of the Sword, Young India · 1920
verified