Albert Einstein - Zitate aus Mein Weltbild - Sieben Radierungen von Terry Haass (Albert Einstein - Excerpts from "Ideas and Opinions" - Translations from "Mein Weltbild - Seven Etchings by Terry Haass)

Terry Haass

Foreword

“The proposal of the League of Nations and its International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at Paris… affords me a very welcome opportunity of conferring with you upon a question which, as things now are, seems the most insistent of all the problems civilization has to face. This is the problem: Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?”

In his letter of 30 July 1932, Einstein addressed this question to Sigmund Freud. Thus started, seven years before the second Worldwar, the Einstein-Freud exchange of views on “the problem of world peace”.

Einstein thought that only in a peaceful world could men render more humane their coexistence. In a warless world men could live, in accordance with their peace ideals, without fear of aggression and destruction.

Einstein’s positive attitude to life was manifest in his ideals which, as he said, have lighted his way; they were: “Kindness, Beauty and Truth.” For him there was no doubt that “the effort to get at truth has to precede all other efforts.”

Leon Steinig

Hermance, Geneva, 18 April 1975.