About Newton: Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort.

Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein’s reply was “I don’t know, why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?

Fortunate Newton, happy childhood of science. Nature to him was an open book. He stands before us strong, certain, and alone.

I make it a rule not to clutter my mind with simple information that I can find in a book in five minutes.

I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books.

Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.

My deep religiosity […] found an abrupt ending at the age of twelve, through the reading of popular scientific books.

Never memorize what you can look up in a book.