Saying Same Thing Over and Over Again
Albert Einstein? Al-Betimes? Narcotics Anonymous? Max Nordau? George Bernard Shaw? Samuel Beckett? George A. Kelly? Rita Mae Dark-brown? John Larroquette? Jessie Potter? Werner Erhard?
Honey Quote Investigator: It's foolish to repeat ineffective deportment. One popular formulation presents this point harshly:
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over once again and expecting a dissimilar result.
These words are usually credited to the acclaimed genius Albert Einstein. What do you lot think?
Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Einstein wrote or spoke the statement to a higher place. It is listed within a section chosen "Misattributed to Einstein" in the comprehensive reference "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein" from Princeton University Printing. [one] 2010, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, Edited by Alice Calaprice, Section: Misattributed to Einstein, Quote Page 474, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Bailiwick of jersey. (Verified on paper)
The earliest strong match known to QI appeared in October 1981 within a Knoxville, Tennessee newspaper article describing a meeting of Al-Anon, an arrangement designed to help the families of alcoholics. The journalist described the "Twelve Steps" of Al-Betimes which are based on similar steps employed in Alcoholics Bearding. The newspaper began with these two steps: [2] 1981 Oct eleven, The Knoxville News-Lookout man Al-Anon Helps Family, Friends to Orderly Lives by Betsy Pickle (Living Today Staff Writer), Quote Page F17, Column 2, Knoxville, Tennessee. (GenealogyBank)
Pace 1: Nosotros admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Pace 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
One of the attendees at the coming together hesitated to have the accuracy of second step. Accent added to excerpts past QI:
Not all the women are willing to acknowledge they needed to be "restored to sanity." In fact, one of them adamantly maintains that she had never reached a bespeak of insanity. But another remarks, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over once again and expecting different results."
The 2nd primeval strong lucifer known to QI appeared in a pamphlet printed by the Narcotics Anonymous system in November 1981: [iii] 1981, Narcotics Anonymous Pamphlet, (Basic Text Approval Form, Unpublished Literary Piece of work), Affiliate Iv: How Information technology Works, Step Two, Page 11, Printed Nov 1981, Copyright 1981, W.South.C.-Literature … Keep reading
The toll may seem college for the addict who prostitutes for a fix than it is for the addict who merely lies to a dr., 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 higher up on the website amonymifoundation.org back in Feb 2011. The document stated that is was printed in November 1981, and it had a 1981 copyright notice. The website was after reorganized, but the document remains available via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine database.
Beneath are additional selected citations in chronological guild.
The linkage between insanity and repetition has a long history. The controversial volume "Degeneration" by Max Nordau was published in 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 2d Edition of the High german Work), Quote Page 238, D. Appleton and Company. (Google Books Full View) link
Has anyone anywhere in the poetry of the 2 worlds ever seen such complete idiocy? These 'Ahs' and 'Ohs,' this want of comprehension of the simplest remarks, this repetition four or five times of the aforementioned imbecile expressions, gives the truest conceivable clinical picture 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 back upon the author and suggested that Nordau might diagnose himself as mentally unsound: [five] 1895 July 27, Liberty, Volume 11, Number 6, A Degenerate's View of Nordau by Bernard Shaw, Quote Folio two, Column ane, Published by Benj. R Tucker, New York. (Reprint in 1970 by Greenwood Reprint … Continue reading
I have read Max Nordau's "Degeneration" at your request,—two hundred and lx thou mortal words, saying the same thing over and over once again. That, as you know, is the style to bulldoze a matter into the mind of the world, though Nordau considers it a symptom of insane "obsession" on the part of writers who do non share his own opinions. His message to the world is that all our characteristically mod works of fine art are symptoms of illness in the artists, and that these diseased artists are themselves symptoms of the nervous burnout of the race past overwork.
The 1955 volume "The Psychology of Personal Constructs" by George A. Kelly included a definition that corresponded to the saying under investigation although information technology employed a different vocabulary: [half-dozen] 1955, The Psychology of Personal Constructs by George A. Kelly, Volume 2: Clinical Diagnosis and Psychotherapy, Quote Folio 831, Published past Westward. W. Norton & Company, New York. (Verified on paper)
From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs we may define a disorder equally 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 speech containing a thematically related adage: [7] 1981 October 24, The Milwaukee Sentinel, Search For Quality Called Key To Life by Tom Ahern, Quote Page 5, Column 5, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Google News Archive)
"If you always do what y'all've always done, you always get what you've always gotten." That was the advice of Jessie Potter, the featured speaker at Friday's opening of the seventh annual Woman to Woman conference.
More than data about the quotation above is available here.
In October 1981 the saying was spoken by an attendee of an Al-Anon meeting as noted previously:
Insanity is doing the same affair over and over again and expecting different results.
In November 1981 a pamphlet from Narcotics Anonymous independent a close match equally noted previously:
Insanity is repeating the aforementioned mistakes and expecting different results.
The 1983 novel "Sudden Death" by Rita Mae Brown included an instance credited to Jane Fulton who was a graphic symbol inside the book: [8] 1983, Sudden Death by Rita Mae Brownish, Chapter 4, Quote Page 68, Published past Runted Books, New York. (Verified with scans)
The problem with Susan was that she made the same mistakes repeatedly. She'd fall in love with a woman and eat her. Susan thought that her mere presence was enough. What more was there to give? When she tired, normally after a year or so, she'd find another woman.
Unfortunately, Susan didn't recall what Jane Fulton once said. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."
A June 1983 book review of "Sudden Decease" in "The Blaring-Ledger" of Jackson, Mississippi reprinted the saying: [9] 1983 June 19, The Clarion-Ledger, "Sudden Decease" a circuitous metaphor by Stephen L. Silberman, (Book review of "Sudden Death" by Rita Mae Dark-brown), Quote Folio 7H, Column 2, … Go on reading
Women'due south tennis gets a thorough dissecting in this story. Jane Fulton is the critical sports writer who contends "Modern professional person sports rewards players for function instead of character. Responsibleness is normally divers as doing a job better than anyone else." She looks askance at professional person tennis and says "Win and become a god. Lose and be forgotten." Finally after following the lives and careers of the players, and the game itself, she concludes, "Insanity is doing the aforementioned affair over and over and over once more, but expecting different results."
Also in 1983 Samuel Beckett, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, offered a counterpoint perspective in his work "Worstward Ho": [10] 1983, Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett, Quote Page 7, Grove Press Inc., New York. (Verified with scans)
All of old. Nothing else always. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail ameliorate.
In Jan 1986 the Emmy-winning actor John Larroquette who was a star in the television set comedy series "Dark Court" shared the definition during a newspaper interview: [11] 1986 January 5, The Sydney Forenoon Herald, Television with Jacqueline Lee Lewes: From drugs, drink to… Night Court: 'Confessions of an Emmy Star, Quote Folio 31, Column 3, Sydney, New … Go along reading
He pops in a definition of insanity – "It'due south the repetition of the aforementioned action expecting unlike results. Like jumping out of a 40-storey building, breaking every os, spending half dozen months in hospital, going back to the same building, up to the 39th floor, jumping and expecting it to be different. It is NEVER dissimilar."
In April 1986 an opinion slice by Baltazar A. Acevedo Jr in "The Dallas Morning News" of Texas included the saying: [12] 1986 April 25, The Dallas Morning News, Leadership Beyond Ethnicity Should Be Goal of Dallasites by Baltazar A. Acevedo Jr., Dallas, Texas. (NewsBank Access World News)
I once heard insanity divers as a procedure by which an private or a arrangement does something over and over once again in the same way while yet expecting different results. To go on to evaluate and address bug in our customs strictly along indigenous, instead of human, considerations is insane if merely for one reason: It volition lead to the polarization that is the standard of paranoid societies.
The 1988 book "Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World" included an instance: [13] 1988 Copyright, Raising Cocky-Reliant Children in a Cocky-Indulgent World: 7 Building Blocks for Developing Capable Young People past H. Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelsen, Quote Page 174, Published by … Continue reading
Flexibility is the power to bend when we find ourselves in unworkable positions. A universal feature of insanity is inflexibly doing the same thing over and over while hoping for different results. Flexibility in the face of changing circumstances, by contrast, is a hallmark of mental health.
By 1990 the saying was being attributed to Einstein. For instance, the "Austin American-Statesman" of Austin, Texas published the following remark fabricated by Travis Canton District Attorney Ronnie Earle: [fourteen] 1990 Nov 19, Austin American-Statesman, Section: News, Prison house Puzzle – Threat of cost explosion poses difficult choices by Mike Ward, Quote Folio A1, Austin, Texas. (NewsBank Admission Globe … Go along reading
Einstein once said that insanity is doing the aforementioned thing over and over and expecting a different result.
In 1991 "The Seattle Times" printed the thoughts of an Indiana judge who ascribed another version of the saying to Einstein: [fifteen] 1991 July 4, The Seattle Times, Section: Editorial, Getting Out of the Freedom Business by Don Williamson, Quote Page A8, Seattle, Washington. (NewsBank Access World News)
The jurist from the Hoosier State subscribes to Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the aforementioned thing 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 proper noun was misspelled as "Erhart": [16] 2000 July xxx, The Indianapolis Star, Get a plan to overcome trouble spots by Tim O'Brien (Knight Ridder News Service), Quote Page J3, Column ane, Indianapolis, Indiana. (Newspapers_com)
Werner Erhart described insanity as 'repeating identical behavior and expecting a different result.' If nosotros repeatedly take difficulties in an surface area of life, doesn't it make sense that our behaviors crusade the problems?
In 2016 the webcomic "xkcd" depicted two characters conversing; the first mentioned the at present 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 writer: Randall Munroe, Date on website: March 18, 2016, Website clarification: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. (Accessed xkcd.com … Go on reading
You've been quoting that cliché for years. Has information technology convinced anyone to change their mind yet?
In conclusion, based on electric current evidence the saying originated in one of the twelve-step communities. Anonymity is greatly valued in these communities, and no specific writer has been identified past the many researchers who have explored the provenance of this adage. The linkage to Albert Einstein occurred many years after his death and is unsupported.
Image Notes: Two arrows pointing at one 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.
(Corking 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 Bearding commendation. Also, thanks to the valuable enquiry conducted by Barry Popik, Ben Zimmer, and Daniel Gackle. Many cheers to Beak Mullins who located the important October 11, 1981 citation.)
Update History: On July 31, 2019 the October 11, 1981 citation was added to the article.
Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/
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