Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
Prominent misattribution to Einstein; popularization via 1980s recovery-community and fiction use is stronger than any Einstein coinage claim, while named authorship remains incomplete.
Evidence roles
Early-1980s recovery-community print trail — Attribution investigations place early documented use in early-1980s recovery-community print; the earliest newspaper hardcopy was not independently re-inspected in this corpus.
Rita Mae Brown, Sudden Death (1983) and later Einstein myth — Popularized in mainstream fiction by Rita Mae Brown’s 1983 novel Sudden Death, then later by unsupported Einstein attributions from around 1990.
Albert Einstein — Current evidence does not securely support coinage by Albert Einstein; major Einstein quotation references list the line as misattributed.
Named author and earliest hardcopy in this corpus — The record remains incomplete as to a named original author, and the earliest newspaper trail (early 1980s recovery-community print) was not independently re-inspected as primary hardcopy in this corpus.
Timeline
- Reported 1980searliest reported occurrence: Early-1980s recovery-community print trail
Attribution investigations place early documented use in early-1980s recovery-community print; the earliest newspaper hardcopy was not independently re-inspected in this corpus.
- 2017-03-23misattributed to: Albert Einstein
Current evidence does not securely support coinage by Albert Einstein; major Einstein quotation references list the line as misattributed.
- 2017-03-23popularized by: Rita Mae Brown, Sudden Death (1983) and later Einstein myth
Popularized in mainstream fiction by Rita Mae Brown’s 1983 novel Sudden Death, then later by unsupported Einstein attributions from around 1990.
- 2017-03-23contested incomplete: Named author and earliest hardcopy in this corpus
The record remains incomplete as to a named original author, and the earliest newspaper trail (early 1980s recovery-community print) was not independently re-inspected as primary hardcopy in this corpus.
Sources
Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results
There is no substantive evidence that Einstein wrote or spoke the statement above. … based on current evidence the saying originated in one of the twelve-step communities.
Scope and review
Search scope. Quote Investigator dossier, Snopes summary, and cited 1981 newspaper / 1983 novel trail. Did not re-inspect Knoxville News-Sentinel microfilm beyond QI.
Evidence reviewed. QI (2017) on early-1980s recovery-community trail and Rita Mae Brown 1983; Ultimate Quotable Einstein misattribution listing via QI.
This revision supersedes revision 1.
- 2026-08-31: Added earliest-reported early-1980s recovery-community occurrence and rebound the index earliest milestone from popularization to that reported occurrence.
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