“I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible [...] The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost.”
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Albert Einstein
“Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind.”
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Albert Einstein
“Come si può mettere la Nona di Beethoven in un diagramma cartesiano? Ci sono delle realtà che non sono quantificabili. L'universo non è i miei numeri: è pervaso tutto dal mistero. Chi non ha il senso del mistero è un uomo mezzo morto.”
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Albert Einstein
“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.”
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Albert Einstein
“A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
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Albert Einstein
“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
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Albert Einstein
“ACADEMIC CHAIRS ARE MANY, but wise and noble teachers are few; lecture-rooms are numerous and large, but the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small.”
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Albert Einstein
“A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order.”
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Albert Einstein
“The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.”
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Albert Einstein
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
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Albert Einstein
“Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me.
- Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp”
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Albert Einstein
“Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.”
―
Albert Einstein
“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”
―
Albert Einstein