He made that comment in reference to not knowing the speed of sound off hand, and it is not remotely foolish. It is a very bad student that wastes his time memorizing endless reams of facts, rather than trying to understand the deeper meaning of what they are reading.

>Education Is Not the Learning of Facts, But the Training of the Mind To Think

-Also Einstein

Information is only useful insofar as it furthers understanding. It has no value outside that beyond parlor tricks or game shows, especially in the modern internet age.

If you work on subject matter you commit it to memory simply through familiarity, this is a great boon as it simplifies many analyses to recall facts.

What good knowing how to think without having the standard inputs; this enables focus on the wider problem rather than interrupting to feed in necessary facts.

E=hf ... but hang on, does that make sense, the trained mind can analyse it. Sure you can look up energies, and Planck and frequencies but having any of those to hand makes your work more efficient. It doesn't just have to make theoretical sense except for v. v. few ... and I say that as an erstwhile theoretician.

Don't get me wrong. Learning facts as a goal is inherently misdirected. But facts are the atoms on which the trained mind works.

Moreover axioms are facts that can't be intuited or derived, they must be learnt of existing systems or defined of new ones.

I think the position espoused in those quotes is hyperbolic.