BEST QUOTES ON EDUCATION, LEARNING, CHILDREN- ALBERT EINSTEIN

ALBERT EINSTEIN QUOTES ABOUT EDUCATION, LEARNING, CHILDREN:

"Failure and deprivation are the best educators and purifiers."

"I do not much believe in education. Each man ought to be his own model, however frightful that may be."

"The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library."

"Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought."

"That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes."

"On education: The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society; it is that education which in the main is founded upon the desire for successful activity and acknowledgment."

"The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement."

"Studying, and striving for truth and beauty in general, is a sphere in which we are allowed to be children throughout life."

"Only if outward and inner freedom are constantly and consciously pursued is there a possibility of spiritual development and perfection and thus of improving man’s outward and inner life."

"Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn the liberating beauty of the intellect for your own personal joy and for the profit of the community to which your later work will belong."

"Schools may favor such freedom by encouraging independent thought."

"I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values."

"Today also there is an urge toward social progress, toward tolerance and freedom of thought, toward a larger political unity… But the students at our universities have ceased as completely as their teachers to embody the hopes and ideals of the people."

"The most valuable thing a teacher can impart to children is not knowledge and understanding per se but a longing for knowledge and understanding, and an appreciation for intellectual values, whether they be artistic, scientific, or moral."

"It is true that my parents were worried because I began to speak relatively late, so much so that they consulted a doctor. I can’t say how old I was then, certainly not less than three."

"In the matter of physics [education], the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see."

"When I was a little boy my father showed me a small compass, and the enormous impression that it made on me certainly played a role in my life."

"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."

"Copernicus, through his work and the greatness of his personality, taught man to be modest."

"Young people especially like to contemplate bold projects. Also, it is natural for a serious young man to envision his desired goals with the greatest possible precision."

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."

"We will hope that future historians will explain the morbid symptoms of present day society as the childhood ailments of an aspiring humanity, due entirely to the excessive speed at which civilization was advancing."

"The students at our universities have ceased as completely as their teachers to enshrine the hopes and ideals of the nation."

"Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice."

"When compared to six years’ schooling at a German authoritarian gymnasium, it made me clearly realize how much superior an education based on free action and personal responsibility is to one relying on outward authority."

"This is quite natural: everybody likes to do that for which he has a talent."

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

"If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself."