“Anonymity is no excuse for stupidity.”
c. 1948, p. 54
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
“Anonymity is no excuse for stupidity.”
c. 1948, p. 54
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Liebe Mutter! Heute eine freudige Nachricht. H. A. Lorentz hat mir telegraphiert, dass die englischen Expeditionen die Lichtablenkung an der Sonne wirklich bewiesen haben.
Postcard to his mother Pauline Einstein (1919)
1910s
Letter (30 July 1947), p. 46
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Quoted by Otto Stern, a colleague of Einstein in Zurich from 1912 to 1914, in a 1962 oral history interview http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4904.html with Thomas S. Kuhn
Attributed in posthumous publications
1940s, Science and Religion (1941)
Comment made after a six-week trip to Japan in November-December 1922, published in Kaizo 5, no. 1 (January 1923), 339. Einstein Archive 36-477.1. Appears in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 269
1920s
1920s, Sidelights on Relativity (1922)
Fonte: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 117
Attributed to Einstein in Carl Seelig's Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography (1956), p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=VCbPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22blind+beetle%22#search_anchor. Said to have been a comment he made to his son Eduard when Eduard asked him, at age 9, "Why are you actually so famous, papa?"
Attributed in posthumous publications
"The Fundamentals of Theoretical Physics," (1940) as quoted in Out of My Later Years (1976)
1940s
Statement on the occasion of Gandhi's 70th birthday (1939) Einstein archive 32-601, published in Out of My Later Years http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=einstein+%22out+of+my+later+years%22+%22will+scarce+believe%22&source=web&ots=xRZlwUOcEY&sig=0oe_RZgwXaNYtrIGz-XDqmfWna0 (1950).
1930s
Variante: Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.
The earliest published source located on Google Books attributing this to Einstein is the 2000 book The Internet Handbook for Writers, Researchers, and Journalists by Mary McGuire, p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?id=Sb-v0K2EkNAC&q=einstein#search_anchor. It was attributed to him on the internet before that, as in this post from 1997 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.graphics.apps.lightwave/msg/d13c55cc4cca4867?hl=en. Variants of the quote can be found well before this however, as in the 1989 book Urban Surface Water Management by S. G. Walesh, which on p. 315 http://books.google.com/books?id=-LcZUPtDykQC&q=%22beyond+imagination%22#v=snippet&q=%22beyond%20imagination%22&f=false contains the statement (said to have been 'stated anonymously'): "The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a challenge and opportunity beyond imagination." Even earlier, the article "A Paper Industry Application of Systems Engineering and Direct Digital Control" http://books.google.com/books?id=A-YpAQAAIAAJ&q=%22and+direct+digital+control%22#search_anchor by H. D. Couture, Jr. and M. A. Keyes, which appears in the 1969 Advances in Instrumentation: Vol. 24, Part 4, has a statement on this page http://books.google.com/books?id=A-YpAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Computers+are+incredibly+fast%2C+accurate+and+stupid%22#search_anchor which uses phrasing similar to the supposed Einstein quote in describing computers and people: "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. On the other hand, a well trained operator as compared with a computer is incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant." Variants with slightly different wording can be found earlier than 1969, as in this April 1968 article http://journals.lww.com/joem/Citation/1968/04000/Fast,_Accurate_and_Stupid.10.aspx. The earliest source located, and most likely the origin of this saying, is an article titled "Problems, Too, Have Problems" by John Pfeiffer, which appeared in the October 1961 issue of Fortune magazine. As quoted here http://books.google.com/books?id=TwwQAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Man+is+a+slow%2C+sloppy%2C+and+brilliant+thinker%3B+computers+are+fast%2C+accurate%2C+and+stupid%22#search_anchor, Pfeiffer's article contained the line "Man is a slow, sloppy, and brilliant thinker; computers are fast, accurate, and stupid."
Misattributed
“Contempt prior to investigation is what enslaves a mind to Ignorance.”
This or similar statements are more often misattributed to Herbert Spencer, but the source of the phrase "contempt prior to investigation" seems to have been William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794): "The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination."
Misattributed
1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)
19 June 51, p. 34
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Variant translation:
I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.
1930s, My Credo (1932)
In Carl Seelig's Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography (1956), Seelig reports that Einstein said this to James Franck, p. 71 http://books.google.com/books?id=VCbPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22how+it+happened%22#search_anchor.
I sometimes ask myself how did it come that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could go deeper into the problem than a child with normal abilities.
Variant translation which appears in Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 27 http://books.google.com/books?id=6IKVA0lY6MAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q&f=false
Attributed in posthumous publications
As quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
Variant translations:
I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Lieber Habicht! / Es herrscht ein weihevolles Stillschweigen zwischen uns, so daß es mir fast wie eine sündige Entweihung vorkommt, wenn ich es jetzt durch ein wenig bedeutsames Gepappel unterbreche... / Was machen Sie denn, Sie eingefrorener Walfisch, Sie getrocknetes, eingebüchstes Stück Seele...?
Opening of a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht in which he describes his four revolutionary Annus Mirabilis papers (18 or 25 May 1905) Doc. 27 http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol5-doc/81?ajax
1900s
Der Majorität der Dummen ist unüberwindbar und für alle Zeiten gesichert. Der Schrecken ihrer Tyrannei ist indessen gemildert durch Mangel an Konsequenz.
Ideas and Opinions
1950s, Essay to Leo Baeck (1953)