Einstein on Peace

“Peace can never be secured by threats, but only by an honest attempt to create mutual trust.”

In the last two decades of his life, Einstein was an indefatigable proponent for world peace. Militant nationalism he deemed the bane of civilization. As the sanguinary history of belligerents attests, wars rarely procure lasting peace. They customarily exacerbate enmities and perpetuate cycles of retributive violence. Typically, the motives for war are labyrinthine and morally opaque. Belligerents are prone to demonize the enemy and to invoke self-defense.

Recipient in 1948 of the One World Award, Einstein crusaded for a potent international organization to adjudicate all conflicts between nations. Comprising representatives from every constituent nation, the organization would be empowered by a constitution approved by all. The unequivocal support of the nuclear powers was essential to the viability of this world government.

So was the big stick. With nothing but paper bullets, the organization could be subverted by recalcitrant nations. All member nations were voluntarily to divest themselves of their armed forces and to contribute soldiers and weaponry to the organization. It alone would have the disposition of offensive weapons.

Nations would mutually inspect methods and installations for the production of weapons. They would freely exchange technical and scientific information with military ramifications.

Nationalism, Einstein maintained, breeds in citizens a propensity for aggression and a perilous assumption of moral superiority.

He reasoned thus: “So long as the individual state, despite its official condemnation of war, has to consider the possibility of engaging in war, it must influence and educate its citizens—and its youth in particular—in such a way that they can easily be converted into efficient soldiers in the event of war. Therefore it is compelled not only to cultivate a technical-military training and mentality but also to implant a spirit of national vanity in its people to secure their inner readiness for the outbreak of war.”

That kind of education, Einstein felt, undermines all efforts to establish moral authority for a supranational security organization.

Einstein encountered massive resistance in his adopted country. Many Americans in the ‘40s and ‘50s, as now, distrusted a world government, especially one invested with military might. They feared unscrupulous powermongers would bend it to their own malevolent wills and, in the process, undermine American interests at home and abroad. Stripped of its puissant firepower, the nation couldn’t protect itself from these forces for ill. We would lose our liberty, independence, prosperity, unfettered pursuit of happiness. We would no longer be a moral beacon to benighted lands.

Why, indeed, should America relinquish its geopolitical and economic hegemony by disarming itself?

Einstein had a simple—some will say simplistic—answer.

America seeks peace, does it not? “A person or a nation,” Einstein wrote, “can be considered peace loving only if it is ready to cede its military force to the international authorities and to renounce every attempt to achieve its interests abroad by the use of force. Peace can never be secured by threats, but only by an honest attempt to create mutual trust.”

Albert Einstein

I believe that the horrifying deterioration in the ethical conduct of people today stems from the mechanization and dehumanization of our lives - the disastrous by-product of the scientific and technical mentality. Nostra culpa. Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits.

Albert Einstein

It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel.

Albert Einstein

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of people is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.

Albert Einstein

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

Albert Einstein

There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein, Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

On Nuclear Weapons:

"Today, the physicists who participate in watching the most formidable and dangerous weapon of all time... cannot desist from warning and warning again: we cannot and should not slacken in our efforts to make the nations of the world and especially their governments aware of the unspeakable disaster they are certain to provoke unless they change their attitude towards each other and towards the task of shaping the future. We helped in creating this new weapon in order to prevent the enemies of mankind from achieving it ahead of us. Which, given the mentality of the Nazis, would have meant inconceivable destruction, and the enslavement of the rest of the world....

To listen to Einstein speaking on nuclear weapons:

On world peace:

"Large parts of the world are faced with starvation, while others are living in abundance. The nations were promised liberation and justice, but we have witnessed and are witnessing, even now, the sad spectacle of liberating armies firing into populations who want their independence and social equality, and supporting in those countries by force of arms, such parties and personalities as appear to be most suited to serve vested interests. Territorial questions and arguments of power, obsolete though they are, still prevail over the essential demands of common welfare and justice."

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

* "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."

* "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

* "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."

* "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

* "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."

* "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

* "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

* "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."

* "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

* "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

* "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

* "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"

* "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

* "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

* "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."

* "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."

* "He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

* "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)