194
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein say this about his marriage?
Very unlikely. This is sometimes attributed to Einstein on his 50th Wedding anniversary
Einstein was married twice:
The first marriage was to Mileva Marić, from January 1903 until their divorce on ...
- 140k
157
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein comment on feeling the presence of Jesus while reading the Gospels?
There is certainly a quote within a purported interview with Einstein in which the phrase appears and is attributed to Einstein (see Morgoth's answer). As such, the claim can be considered one that ...
- 2,140
109
votes
Did Einstein say this about his marriage?
The quote is really that of Garson Kanin as author of the 1974 book Hollywood: Stars and Starlets, Tycoons and Flesh-peddlers, Moviemakers and Moneymakers, Frauds and Geniuses, Hopefuls and Has-beens, ...
- 104k
107
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein say imagination is more important than knowledge?
It appears that Einstein did in fact say this on multiple occasions, but most notably in his 1931 book Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms.
At times I feel certain I am right while not ...
- 1,019
104
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein say this quote about war & patriotism?
Yes, roughly. This appears to be based upon a quote from his 1931 essay, Mein Weltbild (or "The World As I See It"), which was originally published in “Forum and Century,” vol. 84, pp. 193-194, the ...
- 9,363
92
votes
Accepted
Did Albert Einstein say he admired the Catholic Church for standing up to Hitler?
Albert Einstein
According to Skeptic, Albert Einstein has already answered this himself, and apparently he said: "he had casually mentioned to some journalist that hardly any German intellectuals ...
- 2,782
72
votes
Did Einstein say this quote about war & patriotism?
My source is https://gedankenfrei.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/mein-weltbild-albert-einstein.pdf.
The quoted paragraph is a composite of sentences taken from two places in the essay. This first is ...
- 1,096
72
votes
Did Einstein say this quote about blind belief in authority being the "greatest enemy of the truth"?
The Ultimate Quotable Einstein has this quote:
Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of the truth.
To Swiss teacher Jost Winteler, with whom he boarded while attending school in Aarau, ...
- 30.2k
64
votes
Did Einstein comment on feeling the presence of Jesus while reading the Gospels?
Yes, he did.
In 1929, George Sylvester Viereck interview Albert Einstein for The Saturday Evening Post:
Transcribed as follows:
Unquestionably. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the ...
- 2,411
64
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein say "Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater"?
According to Albert Einstein, the Human Side:
Einstein's fame endured, and brought an extraordinary assortment of mail. For example, a student in Washington, D.C., wrote to him on 3 January 1943 ...
- 30.2k
56
votes
Was the theory of special relativity sparked by a dream about cows being electrocuted?
According to an article in Nature reviewing Magueijo's earlier book, the story is fictional:
Faster Than the Speed of Light is a lively book that captures the excitement and frustrations of doing ...
- 57.1k
50
votes
Did Einstein say this quote about blind belief in authority being the "greatest enemy of the truth"?
Too long for a comment below Laurel's answer, so I'm posting this as a separate answer but I'm really amending Laurel's answer.
The last part of the two stated versions is the same. For the first part,...
- 956
49
votes
Did Einstein say this about his marriage?
It's more or less impossible to prove the negative, but unless someone can find the actual quote, I'm going to say No.
Per Wikipedia, his first marriage ended in divorce after sixteen years, and his ...
44
votes
Accepted
Did Albert Einstein say "the only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once"?
The oldest confirmed use of any version of this quote that I was able to find is from Ray Cummings' short story The Time Professor, published in the Jan. 8, 1921 issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly (...
- 556
36
votes
Accepted
Did Albert Einstein say World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones?
Yes, he did. He was asked with which weapons the third world war would be fought. He answered - in German - with the following remark:
Ich bin [mir] nicht sicher, mit welchen Waffen der dritte ...
- 2,033
29
votes
Did Einstein say "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
In his 1920 book My Second Country, political theorist and Francophile Robert Dell quotes Ernst Renan as saying:
The only thing that gave me any conception of infinity was human
stupidity.
In ...
- 291
23
votes
Did Einstein reply "Ask Tesla" when asked how it felt to be the smartest man alive?
Highly unlikely, and even if it was said, it would have been sarcastic.
Every source that I was able to find online is unsourced, apparently said in a private conversation. As a wise man once said
...
- 22.3k
19
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein secretly swap roles with his driver?
No, it is unlikely to be true.
Here is one version of the story
There’s a story about how Dr. Albert Einstein was traveling to Universities in his car , delivering lectures on his theory of ...
- 24.9k
18
votes
Was Albert Einsten's wife, Mileva Marić, the co-author of the Theory of Relativity?
There's low probability that Marić made a significant contribution to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, let alone that she co-authored it with him.
From Einstein from 'B' to 'Z' by John Stachel:
In ...
- 1,409
18
votes
Did Einstein say this about his marriage?
I don't think so.
For example, W. Isaacson's biography, which is very well documented and covers a lot of his personal life, doesn't cite anything like that at all.
Also, he had 2 marriages, each of ...
- 78.6k
14
votes
Is this quote about the Bhagavad Gita properly attributed to Albert Einstein?
It's highly doubtful that that quote is authentic given Einstein's general views on traditional/organized religion:
The word God, he says, is “nothing more than the expression and product of human ...
- 57.1k
13
votes
Did Albert Einstein say he admired the Catholic Church for standing up to Hitler?
The statement was published well before being partially reprinted by Time in 1940.
It was first published in 1934, for example in the La Crosse Tribune.
The exact wording is by Rev. Dr. S. Parkes ...
- 104k
12
votes
Accepted
Did Albert Einstein say "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler"?
Quoteinvestigator conducted an extensive inquiry into this, and, in short,
Einstein may have crafted this aphorism, but there is no direct evidence in his writings. He did express a similar idea in a ...
- 231
12
votes
Did Albert Einstein lose his Nobel Prize money on bonds that defaulted?
No. The Nobel Prize money went to his ex-wife Mileva Marić as part of their divorce settlement.
See for example Mileva Marić (Wikipedia), and Dark Side of Einstein Emerges in His Letters (New York ...
- 303
11
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein say this about philosopher Peter Deunov?
The earliest citation I can find for this claim is that it came from a 2007 Bulgarian National Television interview with Andrei Griva, a disciple of Deunov. In that interview, Griva stated this ...
- 44.4k
10
votes
Did Einstein comment on feeling the presence of Jesus while reading the Gospels?
Summary:
Yes, he most likely did say it in a 1929 newspaper interview (see Morgoth's answer). The interview happened, it isn't unlikely that he said this about Jesus, the background of the reporter ...
- 3,846
10
votes
Did Einstein say this about philosopher Peter Deunov?
The searchable digital archives of Einstein's papers (which includes not just academic work but also letters, speeches etc) does not contain a document containing Danow (German spelling), Deunov, or ...
- 404
10
votes
Accepted
Did Albert Einstein say that if he could live his life again, he would study the Talmud?
More or less, yes.
That is: apart from the colourful details like "shortly before his death", and 'doing differently if living that live again' — for both of which there is no evidence I ...
- 44k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible