Clerical Quotes (2 quotes)
My “"thinking”" time was devoted mainly to activities that were essentially clerical or mechanical: searching, calculating, plotting, transforming, determining the logical or dynamic consequences of a set of assumptions or hypotheses, preparing the way for a decision or an insight. Moreover ... the operations that fill most of the time allegedly devoted to technical thinking are operations that can be performed more effectively by machines than by men.
From article 'Man-Computer Symbiosis', in IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics (Mar 1960), Vol. HFE-1, 4-11.
To take those fools in clerical garb seriously is to show them too much honor.
Letter to Joseph Levy (20 Jun 1945), declining invitation to join a Jewish Citizens Committee to protest the excommunication of Dr. Mordecai Kaplan by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis because of his disbelief in God as a personal entity. As reproduced in Fred Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East (2009).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
