The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

If you're not learning while you're earning, you're cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

The knowledge of all things is possible

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

Better know nothing than half-know many things.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.