The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.

Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism.

Imagination is the highest form of research.

I salute the man who is going through life always helpful, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien. 

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. 

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been truth, goodness, and beauty.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.

The only thing I did was this: in long intervals I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to me so bad and unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.

I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.

I believe in intuition and inspiration. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.

The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

A little knowledge is dangerous. So is a lot.

One flower is beautiful, a surfeit of flowers is vulgar.

The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Each of us has to do his little bit toward transforming this spirit of the times.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.

I, an old man, greet you Japanese schoolchildren from afar and hope that your generation may some day put mine to shame.

The destiny of civilized humanity depends more than ever on the moral forces it is capable of generating.

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.