John C. Maxwell Quotes

I'm always telling my students that if they can't explain what they are doing, to their grandmothers, then they probably don't understand it themselves.

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

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true?

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

I am a firm believer that if you can explain it to a kid, you're on the right track.

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

If you can't summarize an issue on one page, you don't understand the issue well enough.

There's no idea that can't be explained to a thoughtful 14-year-old. If the thoughtful 14-year-old doesn't get it, it is your fault, not the 14-year-old's.

The more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained.

An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.

If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.

Explanation changes whatever is explained into something explainable.

If we go on explaining we shall cease to understand one another.

Help the man-in-the-street make sense of the bewildering.

The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

A rule to live by: I won't use anything I can't explain in five minutes.

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

The wonderful thing about maths is it's a totally logical subject, and a pathway has been marked out. I think a lot of these things can be crystallised in something quite essential, that people can get. If I can't explain it, I realise that's probably because I don't completely understand it myself.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

The more knowledge you've got, the more understanding you have, the better you are able to implement and pass it on to others.

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.