Did Einstein say, “In the midst of chaos, find simplicity; find harmony in the midst of discord; find opportunity in difficulty”?

A phrase attributed to the Nobel laureate about the need to seek simplicity, harmony and opportunity is widely circulated on the Internet. We checked to see if the famous physicist said anything similar.

This advice with attribution to Albert Einstein meets on many websites with selections quotes famous personalities and aphorisms. It is posted on their pages by users of social networks (Twitter, Facebook*, Instagram*, "VKontakte"), it is also popular on blog platforms ("Zen", LiveJournal). On the Internet you can find many pictures with this phrase. It is also used by modern authorspublishing books about motivation And self-development. Media include this is a statement in collections quotes from the famous physicist.

Almost 70 years have passed since the death of Albert Einstein, and during this time all the famous works, letters and other texts of the scientist have been studied, most of them digitized. According to will physics, a significant part of them is stored at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in electronic archive which contains the largest collection of texts written by Einstein. Similar databases with digitized works and letters are collected in Princeton And California Tech universities (USA). “Checked” was unable to find the English version of this quote (“Out of clutter, find simplicity; from discord make harmony; and finally in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”), which is no less widespread in the English-speaking segment of the Internet than its translation is in the Russian-speaking segment.

In 2011, Princeton University published a collection The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, where all the known statements of the scientist were collected, both real and erroneously attributed to him. It is in the section with the latter that this quote is located. The compilers point out that the first advice (find simplicity) is probably a paraphrase of numerous statements by the physicist on similar topics, the second (find harmony) goes back to the ancient Roman poet Horace, and the third is simply an expression that has been in use for many centuries.

Our colleagues from The Quote Investigator project, which specializes in checking quote attribution, found, in all likelihood, the first time these recommendations were mentioned in connection with the name of Einstein. In 1979, an American physicist John Archibald Wheeler published an article in Newsweek magazine dedicated to the famous scientist, where he wrote: “Einstein’s work had three additional rules that are extremely important in our science, in our problems and in our time. First, find simplicity among the clutter. Second, find harmony in the midst of discord. Third, find opportunity in difficulty.” However, Wheeler did not attribute this statement to Einstein himself, but rather conveyed his own impressions of his colleague’s research. Later that year he again listed these rules in relation to Einstein's work in interview publication Cosmic Search, but even at that time he did not claim that the statement belonged to the Nobel laureate himself. 

Probably, later this phrase began to be attributed to Einstein, since Wheeler’s words were perceived as a quotation, and then his role in the appearance of the aphorism was completely forgotten. However, these tips do not appear in any of the digitized archives of texts belonging to Einstein, so there is no reason to believe that the Nobel laureate ever wrote or said anything similar. And Wheeler, who first associated this phrase with the name of his famous colleague, judging by the broader context, rather describes his impressions of Einstein’s work rather than attributing this statement to him.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Comet Photo AG (Zürich), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?

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