Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
“There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”
Unlike Sigmund Freud or Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw, Einstein never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists.
“What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos,” he explained.
In fact, Einstein tended to be more critical of debunkers, who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe, than of the faithful.
“The fanatical atheists,” he wrote in a letter, “are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who, in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’, cannot hear the music of the spheres.”