The Wit and Wisdom of Einstein

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Who knew?

Competencies: creativity, innovation, managing self, problem solving, communications, self-development

Who benefits: any reader of this Blog

Consultant Usage: useful quotes in training and consulting situations

What’s it about? I have been researching famous people and famous quotes recently.  I kept coming across quotes from Albert Einstein.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he was more than just a genius. 

As I kept reading I realized than many of his quotes have relevance (I was going to use relativity but, darn, it just doesn’t quite work) to the competencies and topics we write about on this site.  So here are some quotes matched to the topics we write about:

On creativity and innovation:
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

On managing self:
“Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.”
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

On problem solving:
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

On communication:
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

On self-development:
“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

On “Underestimators”:
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
“You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.”

On Emotional Intelligence:
“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” 
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
“Information is not knowledge.”
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Just plain funny:
“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
“The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.”
“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.”
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

Catch you later.
[tags]einstein, albert einstein , creativity, innovation, managing self, problem solving, self development, personal growth,  underestimators, emotional intelligence, envisia, envisia learning, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.