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Poems List

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

This is the translation of an Einstein quote emblazoned on a small bronze plaque in the astronomy building of Pasadena City College. Einstein dedicated the building’s observatory in 1931.

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Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

This was an answer from a 1929 interview with the Saturday Evening Post. Einstein was asked whether he trusted his imagination or his knowledge more.

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Regarding sex education: no secrets!

Here is another quote from Einstein’s address to the World League for Sexual Reform in Berlin, 1929. He saw no point in keeping important information from people.

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It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.

From 1921, this quote was part of a response to Thomas Edison saying that college education is worthless.

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Failure and deprivation are the best educators and purifiers.

Einstein was famously humble and knew that to succeed in any grand way, one had to accept the inevitable failure that would precede it. – 1919

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Don’t worry about your marks. Just make sure that you keep up with the work and that you don’t have to repeat a year. It is not necessary to have good marks in everything.

Einstein said this to his son Hans Albert in 1916. Famously, Einstein was not the best student himself.

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You should try to remember that a dedicated teacher is a valuable messenger from the past, and can be an escort to your future.

Photographer and author Alan Richards quoted Einstein saying this in response to a student complaining about a teacher.

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Most teachers waste their time by asking questions that are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing.

Einstein highly valued education and learning, but he was known to have critiques on the common methods of education.

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Preceding generations have presented us, in a highly developed science and mechanical knowledge, with a most valuable gift which carries with it possibilities of making our life free and beautiful such as no previous generation has enjoyed. But this gift also brings with it dangers to our existence as great as any that have ever threatened it.

This quote is from the book The World As I See It , under the section Teachers and Pupils. This particular quote comes from Einstein’s Address to the Students’ Disarmament Meeting.

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The wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common.

This quote is from the book The World As I See It , under the section Teachers and Pupils .

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