What did Albert Einstein mean when he said "Reality is Merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one"?

A persistent....illusion of the optic nerves. Take for example the illusion or reality of being an organism with a set of features, you take this to be the REAL or TOTAL reality, as you do with your human mind and senses, when there it is just a partial, relative, phenomena. He wasn't saying "sense" wasn't real, as much as he was trying to say, there is more than meets the eyes.

That of course, is how I interpret it, and others were interpret how they do....kind of proving the point. Who really knows what reality is outside of their thoughts and observations?

Einstein was talking as a scientist so to me a brick is a solid bit of reality to a scientist it means lots of little thing I will never see But our reality begins at the brick as Bacon puts it Existence is the absolute truth The poet tells us that "We murder to understand" in other words pull things apart to the tiniest little bits and there miss the point that we are more than all the little bits.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.