Quotes to inspire and reflect

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?

My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born, and that is all that is necessary.

It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.

Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.

With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn a living at it. One should earn one’s living by work of which one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anyone can we find joy in scientific endeavor.

For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Science will stagnate if it is made to serve practical goals.

The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of “physical reality” indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. It follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final.

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.

The truth of a theory can never be proven, for one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusions.

A theorist goes astray in two ways: 1) The devil leads him by the nose with a false hypothesis. (For this he deserves our pity.) 2) His arguments are erroneous and sloppy. (For this he deserves a beating.)

I am opposed to examinations—they only deter from the interest in studying. No more than two exams should be given throughout a student’s [college] career. I would hold seminars, and if the young people are interested and listen, I would give them a diploma.

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.

The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship material success as a preparation for his future career.

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

I do not like to state an opinion on a matter unless I know the precise facts.

Regarding sex education: no secrets!

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

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.

Failure and deprivation are the best educators and purifiers.

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.

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

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.

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.

Contact between the intellectual and the masses must not be lost. It is necessary for the elevation of society and no less so for renewing the strength of the intellectual worker; for the flower of science does not grow in the desert.

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.

I am only coming to Princeton to research, not to teach. There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools. The only rational way of educating is to be an example – of what to avoid, if one can’t be the other sort.

It is just as important to make knowledge live and to keep it alive as to solve specific problems.

Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it.

One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.

The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less.

Judges must follow their oaths and do their duty, heedless of editorials, letters, telegrams, threats, petitions, panellists and talk shows.

An undevout astronomer is mad.

Life is the desert, life the solitude;

To know the world, not love her, is thy point,

At thirty a man suspects himself a fool;

How science dwindles, and how volumes swell,

One to destroy, is murder by the law;

Be wise with speed;

Never forget what I believe was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.

Great God! I’d rather be

It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

A simple child, dear brother Jim,