In 1929, Albert Einstein, at that time living in Berlin, gave a wide-ranging interview to George Sylvester Viereck that was published in the Saturday Evening Post. The interviewer seemed like a star-struck teenager and was unduly fawning but nevertheless obtained some interesting quotes from Einstein. One of them (“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”) was been widely circulated.
Einstein’s views on free will are also interesting.
I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will.
…I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.
I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.
…My own career was undoubtedly determined, not by my own will but my various factors over which I have no control – primarily those mysterious glands in which Nature secretes the very essence of life, our internal secretions.
…I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.