Albert Einstein Expresses His Admiration for Mahatma Gandhi, in Letter and Audio

Albert should have stuck to physics. “[N]on-participation in any­thing you believe is evil” is nec­es­sary to be a moral per­son, but patent­ly insuf­fi­cient. Should the Allies have thrown down their arms in the face of Nazi aggres­sion?

Thou­sands of years before Mahat­ma and Albert, a far more author­i­ta­tive moral imper­a­tive was issued: “You shall not stand by your fel­low’s blood.”

My under­stand­ing is that a ground inva­sion of Japan would have been far more cost­ly in terms of human lives than the bomb­ing.

con­grats, josh.
much luck with the con­tin­u­ing jour­ney…

To the Hanoch per­son above,
Ein­stein start­ed mak­ing his paci­fism pub­lic after world war one because he real­ized some­thing had to be done to pre­vent a future cat­a­stro­phe. He urged cit­i­zens of all coun­tries to refuse mil­i­tary ser­vice and that if enough refused, the gov­ern­ments could not pos­si­bly jail so many peo­ple. But with the rise of Hitler and Nazi Ger­many, Ein­stein real­ized that refusal and dis­ar­ma­ment was not plau­si­ble since it was clear Ger­many was on the verge of war and that oth­er Euro­pean nations would now be unwise to not pre­pare. He actu­al­ly upset many peace/pacifist groups because he stopped telling peo­ple to refuse mil­i­tary ser­vice in the mid-1930s. He ful­ly under­stood what Germany(his home­land) was capa­ble of and new that the Allies were com­plete­ly jus­ti­fied in stop­ping them. Paci­fism could work well in ghan­dis­’s case but on a glob­al scale Ein­stein said it could only tru­ly work if there was a cen­tral, glob­al orga­ni­za­tion (like the U.N. But actu­al­ly cap­bable of dic­tat­ing nations arms and weapons and such).

Why did you pho­to­shop Ghan­di into the pic­ture? The orig­i­nal is just of Ein­stein.

It’s fun­ny to me how peo­ple mak­ing gen­er­al com­ments here have no real knowl­edge of his­to­ry but are QUICK TO REGURGITATE lit­tle phras­es they have learned in the streets…

So cute! JUST LIKE SHEEEEEPLE!

I have come to know that Ein­stein had only two por­traits in his home, one of which was Mahat­ma Gand­hi and the oth­er of a sci­en­tist he had admired. Does any­one know who that sci­en­tist was?

To @Hanoch, I do not know if you are at all knowl­edge­able about what non-vio­lence is all about though the sen­tence “Should the Allies have thrown down their arms in the face of Nazi aggres­sion?” makes me think you have mis­in­ter­pret­ed this. In Gand­hi’s time when the for­eign British had unleashed ruth­less tor­ture on the Indi­ans, do you think all Gand­hi told us to do is ’embrace’ our invaders and sit with our hands fold­ed? NO. What Gand­hi advo­cat­ed for all his life is to oppose, to stand up for your coun­try­men but not using vio­lence, which is pos­si­ble, he showed us how. As he said, an eye for an eye will make the world blind. So next time you are post­ing a com­ment, at least make sure you know the fun­da­men­tal con­cep­tion.

Tricky busi­ness stop­ping evil with­out becom­ing addict­ed to ones pow­er to do so, when one can.

In a Gen­tle way, You can shake the world
–Gand­hi

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

“Live as if you were to die tomor­row; learn as if you were to live for­ev­er.”

“Hap­pi­ness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in har­mo­ny.”

“Prayer is not ask­ing. It is a long­ing of the soul. It is dai­ly admis­sion of one’s weak­ness. It is bet­ter in prayer to have a heart with­out words than words with­out a heart”

“Non-vio­lence is the great­est force at the dis­pos­al of mankind. It is might­i­er than the might­i­est weapon of destruc­tion devised by the inge­nu­ity of man. Mahat­ma Gand­hi
”

I could­n’t have picked bet­ter human the these two mega human­i­tar­i­ans
Thank you
Just love­ly

Are you say­ing that Gand­hi and Ein­sien did not meet?

Brave priests like Boen­ho­ef­fer died in Hitler’s con­cen­tra­tion camps when they stood up against the Nazi evil. At the end of the day, more than reli­gion, it is your own con­science and char­ac­ter. I have seen evil fol­low­ers of faith — who would pick ele­ments from their faith books out of con­text to jus­ti­fy their evil actions. Much as there are benev­o­lent and car­ing athe­ists. When the Church burnt “witch­es” or “heretics” at the stake for hun­dreds of years, I am sure peo­ple of faith saw good in those acts.

What gand­hi said & what he prac­tised is polar oppo­site. I think he is mad &power mon­ger. Through­out his life he only played tricks to befool oth­ers &he was suc­cess­ful.

I believe Ein­stein vis­it­ed dur­ing Gand­hi’s 70th birth­day par­ty. There, he gave this speech:

“A leader of his peo­ple, unsup­port­ed by an out­ward author­i­ty: a politi­cian whose suc­cess rests not upon craft nor the mas­tery of tech­ni­cal devices, but sim­ply on the con­vinc­ing pow­er of his per­son­al­i­ty; a vic­to­ri­ous fight­er who always scorned the use of force, a man of wis­dom and humil­i­ty, armed with resolve and inflex­i­ble con­sis­ten­cy, who has devot­ed all his strength to the uplift­ing of his peo­ple and the bet­ter­ment of their lot; a man who has con­front­ed the bru­tal­i­ty of Europe with the dig­ni­ty of the sim­ple human being and thus at all times risen supe­ri­or. Gen­er­a­tions to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever walked upon this earth.”

It’s always an edu­ca­tion to read about the lives of great ppl, such as Mahat­ma Gand­hi and Ein­stein.

What I would like to know is whether Ein­stein had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to know/learn/read in Ger­man or Eng­lish, the Gita? Sure­ly, with his asso­ci­a­tion with the Mahat­ma, he must have, right?

Ein­stein became a veg­e­tar­i­an, pos­si­bly an influ­ence of the Mahat­ma.

Today is Ein­stein ‘s Birth­day! Hap­py Birth­day sir!