Jacob on Albert Einstein

“Einstein's manner was full of charm and bonhomie. He enjoyed a joke and had many a jibe at the Nazi Professors, one hundred of whom in a book had condemned his theory. "Were I wrong," he said, "one professor would have been quite enough." Also, in speaking of Nazis, he once said: "I thought I was a Physicist, I did not bother about being a Jew until Hitler made me conscious of it."”

“It is almost impertinent to talk of the ascent of man in the presence of two men, Newton and Einstein, who stride like gods. Of the two, Newton is the Old Testament god; it is Einstein who is the New Testament figure. He was full of humanity, pity, a sense of enormous sympathy. His vision of nature herself was that of a human being in the presence of something god-like, and that is what he always said about nature. He was fond of talking about God: 'God does not play at dice', 'God is not malicious'. Finally Niels Bohr one day said to him, 'Stop telling God what to do'. But that is not quite fair. Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his life showed, and his work, is that when the answers are simple too, then you hear God thinking.”