Einstein's Right Brain?

Searching this morning for a specific quote by Albert Einstein, I found these. Surprisingly for a scientist, Einstein speaks often about what we might call "spirit" (Note to self: I'm showing my ignorance here by thinking that scientists aren't concerned with the spiritual. Time to do something about that...).

In fact, some of his comments seem positively Buddhist to my ears (cue image of Al practicing yoga.)

• "The only real valuable thing is intuition."

• "A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

•  "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."

A sign with these words hung in Einstein's office at Princeton University:

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

I've decided that Einstein was even smarter that I initially thought.

 Image by rzrxtion via Flickr, Bauhaus - Swing The Heartache: The BBC Sessions,
under a Creative Commons license.