The story behind the words

The Patent Clerk Who Tried

Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, photographed at Princeton

Albert Einstein — Nobel Prize in Physics, 1921 · Princeton, New Jersey · Public domain

Bern, Switzerland, 1905. A twenty-six-year-old technical assistant at the Swiss Patent Office arrives each morning, processes his filings, and then — in the margins of a clerical job he could not escape — writes physics. He has no academic position, no laboratory, no senior colleagues to consult. That year he publishes four papers. One establishes the photoelectric effect, for which he will eventually receive the Nobel Prize. One describes Brownian motion. One introduces special relativity. One contains the equation E = mc². All four are published in the same journal, in the same year, while he is working a day job. He is someone who tried.

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." — attributed to Albert Einstein

The logic of the quote is airtight. Mistakes are the direct evidence of attempts — they exist only because something was tried. A life containing no mistakes is therefore a life containing no attempts: no ventures into unfamiliar territory, no risks taken, no new ground broken. The quote does not argue that mistakes are good in themselves. It argues that their absence is not a virtue when it comes from the absence of trying. Perfectionism that prevents action is not precision. It is paralysis wearing the disguise of standards.

The line is widely attributed to Einstein, though researchers have not been able to trace it to any of his verified writings, letters, or recorded statements — the earliest known link to his name appeared only in 1995. Einstein is, like Churchill and Lincoln, one of history's great quote magnets: figures whose authority is so compelling that memorable lines tend to collect around their name. The attribution may be uncertain. The idea, however, is entirely consistent with how Einstein actually worked and spoke. He described his method often: question settled assumptions, tolerate uncertainty, be wrong on the way to being less wrong. The spirit of the quote is authentically his, even if the exact wording is not.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was born in Ulm, Germany, and spent his early career unable to secure an academic position — hence the patent office. His general theory of relativity, published in 1915 and confirmed by astronomical observation in 1919, made him internationally famous almost overnight. When he visited the United States in 1933, the Nazi regime had stripped him of his citizenship and confiscated his property. He settled at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and never returned to Europe. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940 and died in Princeton in 1955. The patent office clerk who rewrote the laws of physics in his spare time was, if nothing else, someone who kept trying new things.

What have you been avoiding because you might get it wrong — and what would trying actually cost you?