Albert Einstein Quotes

Things actually not said by Albert Einstein

A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Albert Einstein but are in fact from someone else. Did Albert Einstein say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Variants : I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots. I fear the day when technology overlaps our humanity. It will be then that the world will have permanent ensuing generations of idiots. | 1995 film Powder includes a similar quo

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Contempt prior to investigation is what enslaves a mind to Ignorance.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: 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

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Earliest sources found on google books date to 2013 (for example, p. 123 of Learning PHP Design Patterns ), earliest version found on twitter is this tweet from January 2009 , with the variant "intelligence is the ability to change your mind" posted in this November 2008 tweet , and the variant "int

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed in emails in 1999, as debunked at "Malice of Absence" at Snopes.com | Variant: Evil is the absence of God. This statement has been attributed to others before Einstein; its first attribution to Einstein appears to have been in an email story that began circulating in 2004. See the Urban L

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Earliest attribution located is The Yogi and the Commissar by Arthur Koestler (1945), p. v . Koestler prefaces it with "My comfort is what Einstein said when somebody reproached him with the suggestion that his formula of gravitation was longer and more cumbersome than Newton's formula in its elegan

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Two things inspire me to awe: the starry heavens and the moral universe within.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: If Einstein said this, he was almost certainly quoting philosopher Immanuel Kant 's words from the conclusion to the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), translated in Paul Guyer's The Cambridge Companion to Kant ( p. 1 ) as: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe,

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This is similar to a quote attributed to Mark Twain : "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education". The earliest published source located attributing the quote to Einstein is the 1999 book Career Management for the Creative Person by Lee T. Silber, p. 130 , while the earliest published

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This quote does appear in Einstein's 1940 essay "The Fundaments of Physics" which can be found in his book Out of My Later Years (1950), but Einstein does not claim credit for it, instead calling it " Lessing 's fine saying".

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Earliest source located that attributes this to Einstein is the 1975 book The Nature of Scientific Discovery: A Symposium Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Birth of Nicolaus Copernicus edited by Owen Gingerich, p. 585 . But long before that, the 1944 book Einstein: An Intimate Study of a Gr

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

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

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: variant: If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself. | variant: If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. | Frequently attributed to Richard Feynman | Probably based on a similar quote about explaining physics to a "barmaid" b

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Earliest published version found on Google Books with this phrasing is in the 1993 book The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking by Tracy L. LaQuey and Jeanne C. Ryer, p. 25 . However, the quote seems to have been circulating on the internet earlier than this, appearing for ex

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The mind that opens to a new idea, Never comes back to its original size.”

  Actually by: Oliver Wendell Holmes

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but the actual source is Oliver Wendell Holmes. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Actually said by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. in his book The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table : "Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Die Astrologie ist eine Wissenschaft für sich. Aber eine wegweisende. Ich habe viel aus ihr gelernt und vielen Nutzen aus ihr ziehen können. Die physikalischen Erkenntnisse unterstreichen die Macht der Sterne über irdisches Geschick. Die Astrologie aber unterstreicht in gewissem Sinne wiederum die physikalischen Erkenntnisse. Deshalb ist sie eine Art Lebens-elixier für die Gesellschaft!”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: English: Astrology is a science in itself and contains an illuminating body of knowledge. It taught me many things, and I am greatly indebted to it. Geophysical evidence reveals the power of the stars and the planets in relation to the terrestrial. In turn, astrology reinforces this power to some ex

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: A variation on a quotation of Alexander Pope , attributed to Einstein in various recent sources, such as Marvin Minsky 's The Emotion Machine (2006), p. 176 , and at the start of the 2006 pilot episode of the television series Eureka . The oldest published source located attributing this to Einstein

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Actually written by E. F. Schumacher in a 1973 essay titled "Small is Beautiful" which appeared in The Radical Humanist: volume 37 , p. 22 . Earliest published source found on Google Books attributing this to Einstein is BMJ: The British Medical Journal , volume 319, 23 October 1999, p. 1102 . It wa

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: 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 . It was attributed to him on the internet before that, as in this post from 1997 . Variants of the quote can be

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Einstein did write this quote in "On Education" from 1936, which appeared in Out of My Later Years , but it was not his own original quip, he attributed it to an unnamed "wit". | Very popular in French: " La culture est ce qui reste lorsque l'on a tout oublié " (Culture is that which remains, if one

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination ... no more men!”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: A variant — "Professor Einstein, the learned scientist, once calculated that if all bees disappeared off the earth, four years later all humans would also have disappeared" — appears in The Irish Beekeeper , v.19-20, 1965-66, p74, citing Abeilles et Fleurs ( Bees and Flowers , the house magazine of

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The most important decision we can make is whether this is a friendly or hostile universe. From that one decision all others spring.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Multiple variations of this quote can be found, but the earliest one on Google Books which uses the phrase "friendly or hostile" and attributes it to Einstein is The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spiritual Healing by Susan Gregg (2000), p. 5 , and this book gives no source for the quote. | A variant is

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Variously attributed also to Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain . The earliest known occurrence, and probable origin, is from a 1981 text from Narcotics Anonymous : "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." Cf. Rita Mae Brown § Misattributed .

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: It seems that this quote has only begun to be attributed to Einstein recently, the earliest published source located being the 2008 book Visualization for Dummies by Bernard Golden, p. 85 . Before that it was often attributed to the physicist John Wheeler , who quoted the saying in Complexity, Entro

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: From William Bruce Cameron's Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking (1963), p. 13. The comment is part of a longer paragraph and does not appear in quotations in Cameron's book, and other sources such as The Student's Companion to Sociology (p. 92) attribute the quote to

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: According to The Quote Verifier (2006) by Ralph Keyes, Einstein never said any such thing. (According to p. 285 of the book's "source notes" Keyes checked New Statesman 16 April 1965, which is commonly cited as the source of this quote. Some other books claim it is from New Statesman 16 April 1955 a

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The earliest published attribution of this quote to Einstein found on Google Books is the 1991 book The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis by Raj Jain (p. 507), but no source to Einstein's original writings is given and the quote itself is older; for example New Guard: Volume 5, Issue 3 fr

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Commonly quoted on the internet, and also in recent books such as Planetary Survival Manual by Matthew Stein (2000), p. 51. | Stein's book is the earliest published source located with that precise version of the quote, but the quote can be found in earlier Usenet posts such as this one from 1995 ,

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Commonly quoted on the internet, this quote is actually from Karl Grossman, via his 1980 book Cover Up: What You are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power (p. 155; freely available online via its publisher ; see PDF page 187).

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Variant: If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind then what are we to think of an empty desk? | Variant: If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign? | Attributed to Dr. Laurence J. Peter . Earliest source is "Peter's Quotations," page 333.

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: According to Barbara Wolff, of The Hebrew University's Albert Einstein Archives, this is not one of Einstein's identifiable quotations. (Source: paralegalpie.com .) | The phrase "the only source of knowledge is experience" is found in an English-language essay from 1896: "We can only be guided by wh

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: As Quote Investigator explains, allegories about animals doing impossible things have been incredibly popular in the past century. But no, this one isn't from Einstein. (Source: .)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: There's no evidence that Einstein ever said this. (Source: .)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “International law exists only in textbooks on international law.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The anthropologist Ashley Montagu said it in an interview with Einstein. (Source: .)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Found anonymously in newspaper columns from the early 1920s . Originally presented in dialogue format : "Dorcas—"Do you ever allow a man to kiss you when you're out motoring with him? Philippa—"Never, if a man can drive safely while kissing me he's not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. | It

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “You can recognize a really good idea by the fact that its implementation seems impossible in the first place.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Google shows that the internet often attributes this statement to Einstein, but never with a source. The English version of the quote not occur in any book in Google Books, but a forum post dated February 2010 indicates this is a translation of the German phrase "Eine wirklich gute Idee erkennt man

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: An abbreviated version of a quote by California politician Dianne Feinstein , from an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine in October 1985 , on the topic of women running for public office. The original was: "... I really do have staying power. That's important for women who run for office. When you

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The original: "Example is not the main thing. It is the only thing. That is, if the one giving the example is not saying to himself, 'Behold I am giving an example." That spoils it. Anyone thinking of the example he will give to others has lost his simplicity. Only as a man has simplicity can his ex

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Einstein in Treasury of the Christian Faith (1949) p. 415 books.google , and subsequently repeated in other books. No original source where Einstein supposedly said this has been located, and it is absent from authoritative sources such as Calaprice, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein . Th

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world. The root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Often attributed to the 26 November 1938 issue of Collier's Weekly , an investigation of the quote in this blog post included scans of that issue of Collier's, here and here and here and here , showing it does contain the individual statements "anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Never share: 1) the secret of your success 2) don't share your problems with anyone 3) Don't share your dreams with anyone. 4) Do not share with anyone how much you earn 5) Don't share your family problems with anyone”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This has been repeated on many many youtube videos (one of them has over 2.5 million views: 5 Things Never Share With Anyone ( Albert Einstein ) ) under various titles but often with a "5 things" and "share" (never) theme. All five quotes are falsely attributed to Albert Einstein and elaborated on i

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Dogma is the enemy of progress (speech at Sorbonne, 1929)”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: AI fabrication, quoted by Petra De Sutter, the rector of Ghent University, in 2025. [ 4 ]

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “AI fabrication, quoted by Petra De Sutter, the rector of Ghent University, in 2025. [ 4 ]”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Dogma is the enemy of progress (speech at Sorbonne, 1929)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.”

  Actually by: Albert Einstein (the first sentence is genuine; the second is added)

  Einstein did write 'imagination is more important than knowledge' in a 1929 Saturday Evening Post interview, but the popular extended version with 'imagination embraces the entire world' is a later embellishment that conflates several Einstein remarks. The widely-circulated long form is not what Einstein actually said in any single statement.

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain — first attributed to Einstein decades after his death

  There is no record of Einstein writing or saying this in any of his published works, letters, or speeches. The earliest known appearance is a 1947 quotation in Frederick S. Perls's Ego, Hunger, and Aggression — but Perls attributed it to a friend, not to Einstein. The Einstein attribution gained traction only in later decades.

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Variant: Evil is the absence of God.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  This statement has been attributed to others before Einstein; its first attribution to Einstein appears to have been in an email story that began circulating in 2004. See the Urban Legends Reference Pages for more discussion.

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  Variant, earliest known published version is How to Think Like Einstein by Scott Thorpe (2000), p. 61 . Appeared on the internet before that, as in this archived page from 12 October 1999

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Two vördz: ze smart meterz”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  Quote from a deepfaked video of Albert Einstein in a British advert for electricity meters

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  As quoted in Journal of France and Germany (1942–1944) by Gilbert Fowler White , in excerpt published in Living with Nature's Extremes: The Life of Gilbert Fowler White (2006) by Robert E. Hinshaw, p. 62. From the context it seems that White did not specify whether he had heard Einstein himself say this or whether he was repeating a quote that had been passed along by someone else, so without a primary source the validity of this quote should be considered questionable. Some have argued that elsewhere Einstein defined a "miracle" as a type of event he did not believe was possible— Einstein on Religion by Max Jammer (1999) quotes on p. 89 from a 1931 conversation Einstein had with David… (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  No known source; it appears to be a paraphrase of the last sentence of Einstein's "An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man" . Earliest known attribution is in the Washington Afro-American , AFRO Magazine Section , September 21, 1954, p. 2 (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “In December, 1947, he made the following statement: "I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my life."”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  Attributed in FBI Memo, February 13, 1950 (item 61-4099-25 in Einstein's FBI file—viewable online as p. 72 of "Albert Einstein Part 1 of 14" here , as well as p. 72 of the pdf file which can be downloaded here ). There is no other information in the FBI's released files as to what source attributed this statement to Einstein, and the files are full of falsehoods, including the accusation that Einstein was secretly pro-communist. (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Common sense is actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice lists this as "probably not by Einstein". However, this post from quoteinvestigator.com traces it to a reasonably plausible source: the second part of a three-part series by Lincoln Barrett (former editor of 'Life' magazine) titled "The Universe and Dr. Einstein" in Harper's Magazine, from May 1948, in which Barrett wrote "But as Einstein has pointed out, common sense is actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen." Since he didn't put the statement in quotes it could be a paraphrase, and "as Einstein has pointed out" makes it unclear whether Einstein said this personally to Barrett… (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  Variants: "... is man's greatest invention" and "... is the eighth wonder of the world". May add: "He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it." This Snopes article concluded that its status was uncertain, while this post from The Quote Investigator concludes it is most likely a false attribution, since variants of the quote date back to at least 1916, with the early variants not being attributed to Einstein. (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Fairy tales and more fairy tales. [in response to a mother who wanted her son to become a scientist and asked Einstein what reading material to give him]”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  Found in Montana Libraries: Volumes 8-14 (1954), p. cxxx . The story is given as follows: "In the current New Mexico Library Bulletin, Elizabeth Margulis tells a story of a woman who was a personal friend of the late dean of scientists, Dr. Albert Einstein. Motivated partly by her admiration for him, she held hopes that her son might become a scientist. One day she asked Dr. Einstein's advice about the kind of reading that would best prepare the child for this career. To her surprise, the scientist recommended 'Fairy tales and more fairy tales.' The mother protested that she was really serious about this and she wanted a serious answer; but Dr. Einstein persisted, adding that creative… (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “The really valuable thing is intuition.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  Although similar to many of Einstein's comments about the importance of intuition and imagination, no sources for this can be found prior to The Psychology of Consciousness by Robert Evan Ornstein (1973), p. 68 , where there is no mention of where the quote was originally made. A number of early sources from the 1980s and 1990s attribute it to The Intuitive Edge by Philip Goldberg (1983), which also provides no original source. (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Two things are infinite: the universe and the human stupidity.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  As discussed in this entry from The Quote Investigator , the earliest published attribution of a similar quote to Einstein seems to have been in Gestalt therapist Frederick S. Perls ' 1969 book Gestalt Theory Verbatim , where he wrote on p. 33: "As Albert Einstein once said to me: 'Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.' But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing." Perls also offered another variant in his 1972 book In and Out the Garbage Pail , where he mentioned a meeting with Einstein and on p. 52 quoted him saying: "Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I… (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  The source generally (but falsely) cited is Einstein's The World As I See It (1949). The quotation is probably a translation of " Der Zufall ist das Pseudonym, das der liebe Gott wählt, wenn er inkognito bleiben will " (attributed to Albert Schweitzer ). (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “We cannot solve the problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  "Einstein's famous saying in Copenhagen", as quoted in a FBIS Daily Report : East Europe (4 April 1995), p. 45 May have originated from Einstein's 25 May 1946 telegram quoted in this New York Times story , where he wrote "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe", along with a later comment "We need two hundred thousand dollars at once for a nation-wide campaign to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels." The 1959 English translation of Hans Hellmut Kirst's The Seventh Day modified the two quotes and left out the intermediate… (Disputed.)

• Did Albert Einstein say this? No.

  “If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.”

  Actually by: Source uncertain

  Variant: If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. There is no indication that Einstein said this. According to Quote Investigator, the earliest publication of a quote similar was in a collection of articles about manufacturing in 1966, when an employee of the Stainless Processing Company wrote a piece titled "The Manufacturing Manager's Skills." The article attributed the quote to an unnamed professor at Yale, by saying, "If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the problem is." (See, 1966, The Manufacturing Man and His Job by Robert… (Disputed.)