A brass telescope on a tripod points towards a shimmering bubble beneath a star-filled blue sky.

Original artwork, not a still

Albert Einstein

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.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The mysterious, the speaker claims, is the finest experience available, and it feeds both real art and real science. Someone who no longer stops to wonder or feels awe is, in this view, effectively lifeless, as though walking around with eyes shut to everything around them.

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