E = mc2 is not what Albert Einstein would want to be remembered for. In fact, the genius was quite the ponderer, often jotting down or blurting his thoughts on the true meanings of life. The common themes: always use your imagination before your logic, knowledge isn’t everything, and be a person of simplicity rather than one who aims to be as complex as possible. Well said, Albert.
1. Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
2. Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
3. Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
4. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
5. A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
6. Love is a better teacher than duty.
7. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
8. No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
9. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
10. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
11. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
12. Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
13. Force always attracts men of low morality.
14. Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.
15. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
16. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
17. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
18. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
19. Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
20. Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
21. Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
22. Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
23. Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
24. Information is not knowledge.
25. Never lose a holy curiosity.
