My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a Germany-born theoretical physicist who revolutionized scientific thought with new theories of space, time, mass, motion, and gravitation. A 1921 Nobel Prize winner and considered by many to be the greatest scientist of the twentieth century, Einstein also held a central belief in the need for humanity in science and in the application of reason and compassion to curb the dangerous excesses of human ambition.