Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.? Albert Einstein? Ralph Waldo Emerson?
A mind that is stretched by a new idea or experience can never shrink back to its old dimensions.
Attempting to trace this saying is confusing because the phrasing is highly mutable. The adage has been attributed to physician Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., physicist Albert Einstein, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. I have not been able to find solid citation using the original phrasing. Would you please help me?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in the September 1858 issue of “The Atlantic Monthly” of Boston, Massachusetts within a recurring column called “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior. Holmes’s mind was expanded when he saw a majestic mountain range. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:[1]1858 September, The Atlantic Monthly, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table: Every Man His Own Boswell, by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Start Page 496, Quote Page 502, Column 1, Ticknor and Fields, … Continue reading
Every man of reflection is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined circle which is drawn about his intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his intellectual circle include the curves of many other minds of which he is cognizant. He often recognizes these as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less radius. On the other hand, when we find a portion of an arc outside of our own, we say it intersects ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that it circumscribes it.
Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.
QI believes Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. should receive credit for this adage. The variant phrasings evolved from Holmes’s initial expression. The attributions to Albert Einstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson appeared many decades after 1858 and are unsupported.
Here is a sampling of the different versions of the saying together with dates and attributions:
1858 Sep: Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.)
1895 Oct: A man’s mind now and then is stretched by a new idea and does not afterward shrink to its former dimensions. (Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
1949 Sep: Man’s mind once stretched to a new idea will never return to its former dimensions. (Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
1949 Oct: A man’s mind once stretched to a new idea never quite returns to its original size. (Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
1957: The mind, once stretched, never returns to its original size. (Anonymous)
1959: A man’s mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions. (Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
1960: A stretched mind never returns to its original dimension. (Anonymous)
1961: A man’s mind, once stretched by an idea, can never return to its original size. (Anonymous)
1967: Sometimes a person’s mind is stretched by a new idea and never does go back to its old dimensions. (Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
1980: The mind, once expanded to the dimension of larger ideas, never returns to its original size. (Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
1998: A mind once stretched by new thoughts can never regain its original shape. (Attributed to Albert Einstein)
2006: The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions. (Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson)
2008: A mind exposed to a new idea never shrinks back to its original size. (Attributed to Albert Einstein)
2009: The mind that opens to a new idea never goes back to its original size. (Attributed to Albert Einstein)
Additional details are available in the article on the Medium platform which is available here.
Image Notes: Painting of “The Schmadribach Falls” by Joseph Anton Koch circa 1822. This waterfall is located in the Swiss Alps. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. mentioned the mental changes he experienced when viewing the Alps to help explicate his adage.
Acknowledgements: Great thanks to Christopher Powell, Carolyn Haley, Penny Richards, David J. Haskell, Alessandra Lopez, and Michael Tyler whose inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Also, thanks to researcher Ralph Keyes who pointed to the 1858 citation in his valuable book “The Quote Verifier”. Additional thanks to participants on the Project Wombat mailing list: Carolyn Haley, Fred W. Helenius, and Sue W.