It’s not hard to understand why this quote is so often attributed to Einstein, whose theories are (rightly) famous for their breath-taking economy and the astonishing simplicity of their founding principles. The quote is also exactly the kind of rhetorical ear-candy for which Einstein is known, short and informal, yet affecting a casual profundity with its little antithetical twist.
But in fact, there is no record of Einstein saying the words above. Though, he is on record as saying, "the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
For Einstein, simple does not (necessarily) mean simple to comprehend. Einstein uses simple in the sense of pure, unalloyed and elementary. Far from just grabbing hold of Ockham’s razor and hacking our subject down to something our minds can finally digest with ease, Einstein is telling us to grapple with the full complexity of our subject, but to build our understanding using as few and as simple elements as possible.
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1. veg bought from the farmer's market.
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