Comments on: Einstein never said that…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:47:00 +0000

Einstein, Jefferson, and Confucius stole all their quotes from Oscar Wilde.

By: vinu nair

vinu nair — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:19:00 +0000

I did the google for the same reason as you did.. Thankfully hit ur post!!

Good research..

By: PMtonelete

PMtonelete — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 04:16:00 +0000

I, for one, like quoting from authors I’ve read and yes, big people too. I really admire your research to find truth on this seemingly simple matter. If only everyone was as critical about truth and as inquisitive as you are then maybe we’d have better politicians holding offices, better house hold products, healthier food choices… yah, pretty much a better world in an macroscopic note. Hope you do find the real author, I think that would be a treat.

By: Andrew Kolstee

Andrew Kolstee — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:54:00 +0000

Excellent research. I saw this on a Google Einstein Quote of the Day and I wondered about that and came across this.

By: benshoemate

benshoemate — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:46:00 +0000

Every day the google books library is getting bigger, so hopefully we will eventually solve this mystery. Unfortunately, unless it turns
out Confucius actually said, people are likely to keep attributing it to Einstein. I think the pattern is this:

If it sounds like a fortune cookie – Confucius said it. If it sounds like science – Einstein said it. If is sounds political it was Thomas Jefferson. Eventually the the public will consolidate all knowledge and wisdom to a quote by a single person. I’d really like to be that person.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Nice research! Searching google books just for the words "computers", "fast", "accurate", and "stupid" (since this seems to be common to all variants found so far) and restricting the date range to before 1968, I found what I think may be the original origin of the saying--an article titled "Problems, Too, Have Problems" from the October 1961 issue of Fortune magazine. A snippet from p.53 of The Current I found here quotes the Fortune article as saying "Man is a slow, sloppy, and brilliant thinker; computers are fast, accurate, and stupid." A little more searching reveals the article was written by someone named John Pfeiffer, and I found two other early sources from 1962 that credit Pfeiffer with the observation that computers are fast/accurate/stupid (I put the links in the entry for this quote in the "Talk" section of the Einstein wikiquote page--the "Talk" section has a lot of other supposed Einstein quotes that need to be sourced or debunked, and the Einstein page itself has a lot of false quotes in the "Misattributed" section).

By: Sigi

Sigi — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:33:00 +0000

Just heard the quote today listening to a keynote talk – and also could not believe that it was attributed to Einstein. Hence I came across this page and would like to express my respect for your accurate work! Well done.

By: MDH

MDH — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:17:00 +0000

Well done – I saw this whilst installing BlogJet too – and like you was suspicious of its validity. As you say misquoting to somehow strengthen their case. Would it be churlish of me to un-install their trial and never buy it…?

By: L. T. Fang

L. T. Fang — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:23:00 +0000

I saw this quote attributed to Einstein and immediately became suspicious. Einstein died when computer was still at its infancy, and Einstein never grew up with it. It would be kinda odd for Einstein to say that.
Not to mention Einstein’s more famous quotes attributes stupidity to humans, not brilliance!
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”

By: Patricia Reszetylo

Patricia Reszetylo — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:06:00 +0000

The correct quote is, “Computers are useless,
they can only give you answers” – by Pablo Picasso. He was referring to an abacus or an adding machine… not our familiar pc, nor it ginourmous predecessor.I agree – it’s annoying to find a quote attributed to somebody, and the quote and/or attribution is all incorrect.