In a speech given at a university in Davos, Einstein said, “Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals.” 

In an essay about his initial thoughts about America in the 1920s, he wrote

 “More emphasis is laid on the ‘we’ than the ‘I’… This fact is chiefly responsible for America’s economic superiority over Europe. Co-operation and division of labor are carried through more easily and with less friction than in Europe, whether in the factory or the university or in private good works.”

Einstein disagreed with Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest, but didn’t keep it in the theoretical academic realm.

If people need help, you help them.

In 1933, Albert Einstein formed a committee of 51 public intellectuals and politicians which led to the creation of the American branch of the International Relief Association, initially focused on helping German refugee Jews survive, but through the years, has evolved into the International Rescue Committee, helping millions of people around the world.

People needed help, and that wasn’t an academic problem.

In a speech in 1936, he goes further:

“Darwin’s theory of the struggle for existence and the selectivity connected with it has been cited by many people as authorization for the encouragement of the spirit of competition. In this manner, some people have also tried to prove, pseudo-scientifically, the necessity of the destructive economic struggle of competition between individuals. But this is wrong, because man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a socially living animal. As little as a battle between single ants on an anthill is essential for survival, just so little is this the case with the individual members of the human community.”

“One should guard against preaching to young men that success, in the customary material sense, is the aim of life. For a ‘successful’ man is he who receives a great deal more from his fellow-men, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what is able to receive.”

(New York Times, October 16, 1936)

In 1931, when Linus Pauling gave a lecture about chemical bonds, the process in which two atoms transfer or share protons in order to create a single nucleus, Einstein asked him a lot of questions. “I’m afraid I’m not up on the chemical bond. I shall have to brush up on the subject before taking more of your time.” 

They later became friends and Dr. Pauling joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (ECAS) which Einstein founded in 1946 with Leo Szilard, to “harness the atom for the benefit of mankind, and not for humanity’s destruction.”

Atoms sharing protons strengthen a bond, splitting an atom creates the possibility of destruction.