— Paraphrase of Einstein’s 1921 remark on looking up the speed of sound; not verbatim
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जो बात देखकर पता की जा सकती है, उसे कभी रटिए मत।
What it means
Taken literally the rule is poor advice, and that should be said plainly: nearly everything can be looked up now, and a fact you have to look up is a fact you cannot think with. You do not notice that two figures contradict each other, or that a symptom does not fit the diagnosis, when both halves are sitting in a browser tab instead of in your head.
What it is genuinely good for is triage. It separates constants you will fetch in ten seconds and use once from the material you reason with every day. As a rule about which facts deserve memory it is sound; as a rule about whether to memorise at all, it argues for a mind with nothing in it to connect.
What it teaches you
For any subject you are studying, sort its facts once: what you need mid-sentence or mid-calculation goes into memory, what you need twice a year goes into a reference you can reach fast. And if you are preparing for an exam that scores recall, notice that this line is not your syllabus — the examiner is not Einstein.
अर्थ और सीख
अक्षरशः लिया जाए तो यह सलाह कमज़ोर है — आज लगभग सब कुछ देखकर पता किया जा सकता है, और जो तथ्य दिमाग में नहीं है उससे आप सोच नहीं सकते। इसका असली काम छँटाई करना है: जो तथ्य रोज़ सोचने-समझने में काम आते हैं वे याद रहने चाहिए, जो साल में दो बार चाहिए वे किताब में रहें। और परीक्षा की तैयारी करने वालों के लिए यह पंक्ति सिलेबस नहीं है।
Where it comes from
Almost certainly a paraphrase rather than a verbatim quote. Its seed is a real 1921 incident: asked (reportedly for an Edison-style quiz) about the speed of sound, Einstein answered that he did not carry such information in his mind since it was readily available in books. The pithy one-liner form appears nowhere in his writings.
