Did Albert Einstein say: “Only a fool needs order—genius rules over chaos”?

The phrase attributed to the famous scientist was widely circulated in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. We decided to check if he said anything like that.

This statement, indicating the authorship of Einstein, can be meet on many websites with selections quotes And aphorisms. It's enough popular from users social networks And blogs, there are also many meme pictures with this phrase. Visitors to Q&A services are discussing fairness of statement and are interestedwhether it really belongs to the famous physicist. Sometimes a quote about order and chaos carry out V title biographical articles about the Nobel laureate. You can find it on sale souvenirs with the inscription “When asked to clean a room, quote Einstein: “Only a fool needs order, a genius rules over chaos!” IN biographies Albert Einstein by the Russian writer Maxim Gureev provides exactly this context for the emergence of this phrase - a conversation between the future scientist and his mother. Quote attributed to Einstein in many books by Russian-speaking authors - as artistic, so popular science and even esoteric.

All currently known written sources left by Albert Einstein have been well studied, many of them have been digitized. For example, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem houses a large corpus of scientific works and letters of the famous physicist. A significant part of the archive has been digitized - anyone can check the correctness of the quotes attributed to him on project website. Similar work is being carried out Princeton And California Tech universities. We were unable to find a similar quote on the resources about Einstein created by these institutions. There is no similar phrase in the collection The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, which was published in Princeton in 2011.

Sometimes to a quote about the relationship between geniuses and chaos apply a photograph of Einstein's desk, littered with books and papers. This photo real, it was taken on April 18, 1955, a few hours after the scientist’s death. However, we know nothing about whether the table's state was a reflection of Einstein's philosophical views on order and chaos or just a coincidence. Another popular one on the Internet signature accompanying this photo is a phrase also allegedly said by the Nobel laureate in defense of clutter: “If a cluttered table is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what is an empty table a sign of?” However, neither Verified nor our colleagues from Quote Investigator.

Moreover, the statement that only a fool needs order contradicts views Einstein himself. In an interview, he said: “My views are close to those of Spinoza: admiration for beauty and belief in the logical simplicity of order and harmony.” Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who knew Einstein well, said of him: “He had a quality that made him unique. It was his belief that there was order and harmony in nature and that the human mind could comprehend them.”

In the English-speaking segment of the Internet, there are several significantly different versions of the quote being verified. This indirectly indicates that, most likely, it was loosely translated from some other language, and did not originally appear in English. Most popular option sounds like this: “Order is for idiots. Genius can handle chaos." In the Google Books online library, such a quotation in English appears only in one book 2009 - and without attribution. Slightly less common version — “Order is needed by the ignorant but it takes a genius to master chaos.” It is not found in Google Books at all.

We were unable to find the original source of the quote about order and chaos, but Russian-speaking Internet users published it under the guise of a statement by Einstein at least in 2007. English versions spread much later, judging by the results of a Google search for the citation, already at the end of the 2010s. However, we do not have sufficient grounds to assert that the quote originally originated in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. 

Thus, there is not a single reliable evidence that the famous scientist ever said anything like that. Albert Einstein is one of those people who are often credited with saying things in order to give the words more weight. Most likely, this is what happened with this quote.

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

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3. Did Einstein say: “Only two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity. But I'm not sure about the first one"?
4. Is it true that the author of Einstein's riddle is Albert Einstein himself?