I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. ('The Saturday Evening Post' 1929)
I have no doubt that our thinking goes on for the most part without the use of signs (words), and, furthermore, largely unconsciously. For how, otherwise, should it happen that sometimes we "wonder" quite spontaneously about some experience? This "wondering" appears to occur when experience comes into conflict with a world of concepts that is already sufficiently fixed within us. ('Autobiographical Notes' Schilpp, 1949, pp. 8-9)
These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward. ('Productive Thinking' Wertheimer, 1959, pp. 213; Pais, 1982)
A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. That means it is not reached by conscious logical conclusions. But think it through afterwards you can always discover the reasons which have lead you unconsciously to your guess and you will find a logical way to justify it. Intuition is nothing but the outcome of accumulated earlier intellectual experience. ('Einstein from 'B' to 'Z'' Stachel, 2001, pp. 89)
The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced and combined... The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of a muscular type... Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the associative play already referred to is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will ('The Mathematician's Mind: The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field' Hadamard, 1945, pp. 142-3)
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and obsreving, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, then it is science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition. ('Einstein from 'B' to 'Z'' Stachel, 2001, pp. 88)
The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so much virtue of his individuality but rather as a member of a great human community. ('Society and Personality' Einstein)
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self. ('The World As I See It' Einstein)