Albert Einstein? Paul Arthur Schilpp? Marilyn Ferguson? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: An overly rigid approach to education is counter-productive because it extinguishes natural inquisitiveness. This viewpoint has been expressed as follows:
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
The famous physicist Albert Einstein has received credit for this remark, but I have never seen a solid citation, and I have become skeptical. Would you please trace this quotation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: QI has not found an exact match for this statement in the writings of Albert Einstein; however, there is a close match. Einstein penned a short autobiography which appeared in the 1949 book “Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist”. The book included Einstein’s original German text together with an English translation by Paul Arthur Schilpp. Here is the pertinent passage in both English and German. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail.
Es ist eigentlich wie ein Wunder, dass der moderne Lehrbetrieb die heilige Neugier des Forschens noch nicht ganz erdrosselt hat; denn dies delikate Pflänzchen bedarf neben Anregung hauptsächlich der Freiheit; ohne diese geht es unweigerlich zugrunde.
QI believes that the concise modern statement evolved from Einstein’s sentence given above. Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In March 1949 “Quote: The Weekly Digest” reprinted the passage above:2
Dr Albert Einstein, noted scholar and physicist, suggesting freedom for students to study things that interest them: “It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail.”
Also, in March 1949 an excerpt from Einstein’s autobiography which included the quotation appeared in “Time” magazine.3
In 1983 Marilyn Ferguson published an essay titled “The Mandate of Our Collective Real Self”, and she included a short rephrasing of Einstein’s remark:4
Einstein said at one time, it is a wonder that any curiosity survives formal education. But some people manage somehow to not become separated from their curiosity.
In 1989 a message in the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny contained a large collection of miscellaneous sayings including the following three items. Einstein received credit for the modern expression:5
In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared minds.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. Albert Einstein
It works better if you plug it in.
In 1995 “The Penguin Book of Jokes from Cyberspace” contained the following three items. No ascription was listed for the saying under examination:6
History doesn’t repeat itself — historians merely repeat each other.
It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
It works better if you plug it in.
In 1996 an Oceanside, California newspaper columnist printed the following:7
QUITE QUOTABLE — “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”—Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
In 2006 the saying appeared in “Treasury of Wit & Wisdom: 4,000 of the Funniest, Cleverest, Most Insightful Things Ever Said” from Reader’s Digest:8
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. — Albert Einstein
In 2010 “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press included the passage from Einstein’s 1949 autobiography.9
In conclusion, Albert Einstein deserves credit for the passage he wrote in 1949. Over time the quotation was rephrased and shortened to yield the modern instance.
Image Notes: Picture of chairs in a lecture hall from Katie Montgomery at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Denise Krebs whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Thanks to “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” which contained the key 1949 text. Also, thanks to researcher Barry Popik who found an instance in “The New York Times” in 1949. Popik also located the 1989 Usenet citation.
- 1959 (1949 Copyright), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, Volume 1, Chapter Autobiographical Notes, Quote Page 17,Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1949 March 20-26, Quote: The Weekly Digest, Volume 17, Number 12, May We Quote You On That?, Quote Page 1, Column 2 and 3, Published by Droke House, Indianapolis, Indiana. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1949 March 21, Time, Education: Holy Curiosity, Quote Page 47, Column 2, Time Inc., New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1983 Copyright, The Desire To Be Human: A Global Reconnaissance of Human Perspectives in an Age of Transformation Written in Honour of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, International Teilhard Compendium: Centenary Volume, Edited by Leo Zonneveld and Robert Muller, Chapter: The Mandate of Our Collective Real Self by Marilyn Ferguson, Start Page 162, Quote Page 165, Mirananda Publishers b.v. Wassenaar, Netherlands. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- Usenet discussion message, Timestamp: Aug 4, 1989, 6:30:05 AM, Newsgroup: rec.humor.funny, From: Michael J. Irvin, Subject: Collection of cute sayings. (Google Groups Search; Accessed October 5, 2024) link ↩︎
- 1995 Copyright, The Penguin Book of Jokes from Cyberspace, Collected by Phillip Adams and Patrice Newell, Section: Giggle-Bytes, Sub-Section: Aphorisms, Quote Page 417, Penguin Books, Victoria, Australia. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1996 December 5, North County Times, Marathon running in, where else, Marathon! by Tom Morrow, Quote Page B1, Column 1, Oceanside, California. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 2006, Treasury of Wit & Wisdom: 4,000 of the Funniest, Cleverest, Most Insightful Things Ever Said, Compiled by Jeff Bredenberg, Topic: Education, Quote Page 15, The Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2010, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, Edited by Alice Calaprice, Section: On Education, Students, and Academic Freedom, Quote Page 107, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. (Verified on paper) ↩︎