When You Try Something Over and Over Again
Albert Einstein? Al-Betimes? Narcotics Bearding? Max Nordau? George Bernard Shaw? Samuel Beckett? George A. Kelly? Rita Mae Brown? John Larroquette? Jessie Potter? Werner Erhard?
Dear Quote Investigator: It's foolish to echo ineffective deportment. 1 pop formulation presents this bespeak harshly:
The definition of insanity is doing the aforementioned thing over and over once again and expecting a different result.
These words are commonly credited to the acclaimed genius Albert Einstein. What do you recall?
Quote Investigator: In that location is no substantive evidence that Einstein wrote or spoke the argument above. It is listed within a department called "Misattributed to Einstein" in the comprehensive reference "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein" from Princeton University Press. [1] 2010, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, Edited by Alice Calaprice, Section: Misattributed to Einstein, Quote Folio 474, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. (Verified on paper)
The primeval potent match known to QI appeared in October 1981 within a Knoxville, Tennessee newspaper commodity describing a meeting of Al-Betimes, an arrangement designed to help the families of alcoholics. The journalist described the "Twelve Steps" of Al-Anon which are based on similar steps employed in Alcoholics Anonymous. The newspaper began with these two steps: [ii] 1981 October 11, The Knoxville News-Lookout man Al-Anon Helps Family, Friends to Orderly Lives by Betsy Pickle (Living Today Staff Author), Quote Folio F17, Cavalcade 2, Knoxville, Tennessee. (GenealogyBank)
Step one: Nosotros admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Stride 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore u.s. to sanity
1 of the attendees at the meeting hesitated to have the accurateness of 2nd step. Accent added to excerpts by QI:
Not all the women are willing to admit they needed to be "restored to sanity." In fact, one of them doggedly maintains that she had never reached a point of insanity. But some other remarks, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
The second primeval strong match known to QI appeared in a pamphlet printed by the Narcotics Anonymous organization in Nov 1981: [3] 1981, Narcotics Anonymous Pamphlet, (Basic Text Approval Form, Unpublished Literary Work), Affiliate 4: How It Works, Pace Two, Folio 11, Printed Nov 1981, Copyright 1981, Due west.S.C.-Literature … Continue reading
The cost may seem higher for the addict who prostitutes for a set than it is for the addict who merely lies to a md, but ultimately both pay with their lives. Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.
QI acquired a PDF of the document with the quotation above on the website amonymifoundation.org back in February 2011. The document stated that is was printed in November 1981, and it had a 1981 copyright notice. The website was subsequently reorganized, but the certificate remains bachelor via the Net Annal Wayback Machine database.
Beneath are additional selected citations in chronological social club.
The linkage between insanity and repetition has a long history. The controversial book "Degeneration" by Max Nordau was published in High german in 1892 and translated into English past 1895. Nordau examined the works of a diverseness of artists and savagely attacked those that contained repetition which he believed evinced a mental defect in the creator. For example, he criticized Maurice Maeterlinck's "La Princesse Maleine": [4] 1895 Copyright, Degeneration by Max Nordau (Max Simon Nordau) (Translated from the Second Edition of the German Piece of work), Quote Page 238, D. Appleton and Company. (Google Books Full View) link
Has anyone anywhere in the verse of the two worlds ever seen such complete idiocy? These 'Ahs' and 'Ohs,' this want of comprehension of the simplest remarks, this repetition 4 or five times of the same imbecile expressions, gives the truest believable clinical moving-picture show of incurable cretinism. These parts are precisely those most extolled by Maeterlinck's admirers.
When George Bernard Shaw reviewed Nordau's opus he turned the criticism of repetition dorsum upon the author and suggested that Nordau might diagnose himself as mentally unsound: [5] 1895 July 27, Freedom, Volume eleven, Number 6, A Degenerate's View of Nordau past Bernard Shaw, Quote Page two, Column i, Published by Benj. R Tucker, New York. (Reprint in 1970 past Greenwood Reprint … Continue reading
I have read Max Nordau's "Degeneration" at your request,—two hundred and threescore thousand mortal words, maxim the same matter over and once again. That, as you know, is the way to drive a affair into the heed of the world, though Nordau considers it a symptom of insane "obsession" on the office of writers who practise not share his own opinions. His bulletin to the world is that all our characteristically modern works of fine art are symptoms of disease in the artists, and that these diseased artists are themselves symptoms of the nervous exhaustion of the race past overwork.
The 1955 book "The Psychology of Personal Constructs" by George A. Kelly included a definition that corresponded to the saying under investigation although it employed a unlike vocabulary: [6] 1955, The Psychology of Personal Constructs past George A. Kelly, Book two: Clinical Diagnosis and Psychotherapy, Quote Page 831, Published by W. W. Norton & Company, New York. (Verified on paper)
From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs we may define a disorder as any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation. This is an unusual definition, as psychological thinking ordinarily goes.
In October 1981 an educator and counselor on family relationships delivered a oral communication containing a thematically related adage: [seven] 1981 October 24, The Milwaukee Sentinel, Search For Quality Called Key To Life by Tom Ahern, Quote Folio 5, Column 5, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Google News Archive)
"If you lot ever practise what you've e'er done, you always get what y'all've always gotten." That was the communication of Jessie Potter, the featured speaker at Friday's opening of the seventh annual Adult female to Woman conference.
More data about the quotation above is available hither.
In Oct 1981 the maxim was spoken by an attendee of an Al-Anon meeting as noted previously:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and again and expecting dissimilar results.
In Nov 1981 a pamphlet from Narcotics Anonymous contained a close match every bit noted previously:
Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.
The 1983 novel "Sudden Death" by Rita Mae Brown included an instance credited to Jane Fulton who was a grapheme within the book: [eight] 1983, Sudden Death by Rita Mae Brownish, Affiliate 4, Quote Page 68, Published by Bantam Books, New York. (Verified with scans)
The trouble with Susan was that she fabricated the aforementioned mistakes repeatedly. She'd fall in beloved with a woman and consume her. Susan idea that her mere presence was plenty. What more was at that place to requite? When she tired, normally afterwards a year or and then, she'd find another woman.
Unfortunately, Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said. "Insanity is doing the aforementioned matter over and over again, simply expecting different results."
A June 1983 book review of "Sudden Death" in "The Clarion-Ledger" of Jackson, Mississippi reprinted the saying: [9] 1983 June 19, The Clarion-Ledger, "Sudden Death" a complex metaphor by Stephen L. Silberman, (Book review of "Sudden Death" by Rita Mae Brown), Quote Page 7H, Column 2, … Continue reading
Women's tennis gets a thorough dissecting in this story. Jane Fulton is the critical sports writer who contends "Modernistic professional sports rewards players for function instead of grapheme. Responsibility is normally divers every bit doing a job better than anyone else." She looks askance at professional tennis and says "Win and become a god. Lose and be forgotten." Finally subsequently following the lives and careers of the players, and the game itself, she concludes, "Insanity is doing the aforementioned thing over and over and over again, only expecting dissimilar results."
As well in 1983 Samuel Beckett, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, offered a counterpoint perspective in his work "Worstward Ho": [x] 1983, Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett, Quote Page seven, Grove Press Inc., New York. (Verified with scans)
All of old. Nothing else e'er. Ever tried. E'er failed. No affair. Try again. Fail again. Neglect better.
In January 1986 the Emmy-winning actor John Larroquette who was a star in the television one-act series "Nighttime Court" shared the definition during a newspaper interview: [11] 1986 January 5, The Sydney Morning Herald, Television with Jacqueline Lee Lewes: From drugs, drink to… Night Courtroom: 'Confessions of an Emmy Star, Quote Page 31, Column iii, Sydney, New … Continue reading
He pops in a definition of insanity – "It's the repetition of the same action expecting different results. Similar jumping out of a 40-storey building, breaking every bone, spending six months in hospital, going back to the same building, up to the 39th floor, jumping and expecting it to be dissimilar. Information technology is NEVER different."
In Apr 1986 an opinion piece by Baltazar A. Acevedo Jr in "The Dallas Forenoon News" of Texas included the saying: [12] 1986 April 25, The Dallas Morn News, Leadership Across Ethnicity Should Be Goal of Dallasites past Baltazar A. Acevedo Jr., Dallas, Texas. (NewsBank Access Globe News)
I once heard insanity defined as a process by which an private or a system does something over and over again in the same way while yet expecting different results. To continue to evaluate and address bug in our community strictly along ethnic, instead of human being, considerations is insane if only for 1 reason: Information technology volition atomic number 82 to the polarization that is the standard of paranoid societies.
The 1988 book "Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World" included an case: [thirteen] 1988 Copyright, Raising Cocky-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World: Seven Building Blocks for Developing Capable Immature People past H. Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelsen, Quote Folio 174, Published by … Continue reading
Flexibility is the power to curve when we find ourselves in unworkable positions. A universal characteristic of insanity is inflexibly doing the same affair over and over while hoping for different results. Flexibility in the face of changing circumstances, by contrast, is a hallmark of mental wellness.
By 1990 the saying was beingness attributed to Einstein. For example, the "Austin American-Statesman" of Austin, Texas published the following remark made by Travis County District Chaser Ronnie Earle: [14] 1990 Nov 19, Austin American-Statesman, Section: News, Prison Puzzle – Threat of toll explosion poses difficult choices by Mike Ward, Quote Page A1, Austin, Texas. (NewsBank Access World … Continue reading
Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
In 1991 "The Seattle Times" printed the thoughts of an Indiana judge who ascribed some other version of the saying to Einstein: [15] 1991 July 4, The Seattle Times, Section: Editorial, Getting Out of the Freedom Business organization by Don Williamson, Quote Folio A8, Seattle, Washington. (NewsBank Access World News)
The jurist from the Hoosier State subscribes to Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same matter over and over and expecting a different issue."
In 2000 a columnist working for the Knight Ridder News Service ascribed a version of the saying to the influential lecturer and trainer Werner Erhard although the name was misspelled as "Erhart": [16] 2000 July 30, The Indianapolis Star, Get a program to overcome trouble spots by Tim O'Brien (Knight Ridder News Service), Quote Page J3, Column 1, Indianapolis, Indiana. (Newspapers_com)
Werner Erhart described insanity as 'repeating identical behavior and expecting a different result.' If we repeatedly have difficulties in an area of life, doesn't it brand sense that our behaviors cause the bug?
In 2016 the webcomic "xkcd" depicted two characters conversing; the beginning mentioned the now well-known definition of insanity, and the second replied with a remark that implicitly and cleverly applied the logic of the definition to his companion: [17] Website: xkcd Comic, Comic title: Insanity, Comic author: Randall Munroe, Date on website: March 18, 2016, Website description: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. (Accessed xkcd.com … Continue reading
Yous've been quoting that cliché for years. Has it convinced anyone to change their listen nevertheless?
In determination, based on current evidence the proverb originated in one of the twelve-footstep communities. Anonymity is profoundly valued in these communities, and no specific author has been identified by the many researchers who accept explored the provenance of this adage. The linkage to Albert Einstein occurred many years after his death and is unsupported.
Epitome Notes: 2 arrows pointing at 1 another from OpenClipart-Vectors at Pixabay. Portrait of Albert Einstein circa 1921 past Ferdinand Schmutzer accessed via Wikimedia Commons. Images have been retouched, cropped and resized.
(Great thanks to MJ Redman, Kevin Ashton, Melinda Denson, Linda Sternhill Davis, The Muser, Mededitor, Santanu Vasant, Simon Lancaster, Michael Cochran, David Meadows, J Carson, Guilherme Simões, Ed Darrell, Lee Winkelman, and Fabius Maximus (Ed.) whose inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Special thanks to the volunteer researchers Quora and Wikiquote who mentioned the Narcotics Anonymous commendation. Besides, thank you to the valuable research conducted by Barry Popik, Ben Zimmer, and Daniel Gackle. Many thanks to Bill Mullins who located the important Oct 11, 1981 citation.)
Update History: On July 31, 2019 the Oct 11, 1981 commendation was added to the article.
Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/
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