[Ads-l] My pencil and I are more clever than I am (Attributed to Albert Einstein by Karl Popper)

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Solving difficult problems often requires sketching out preliminary
ideas on paper with a pen or pencil. The paper functions as an
extension of human memory, and a scratchpad for developing thoughts.

After receiving requests to explore the provenance of the saying in
the subject line, I created an article on the Quote Investigator
website here:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/09/15/pencil/

The quotation is not listed in “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” (2010)
edited by Alice Calaprice from Princeton University Press.

Albert Einstein died in 1955. In 1965 the influential philosopher of
science Karl Popper delivered a series of lectures at Washington
University, St Louis. The following year he published “Of Clouds and
Clocks” based on the lecture material. Popper attributed a version of
the remark about pencils to Einstein within a footnote about
computers:

[ref] 1984, Popper Selections by Karl Popper, Edited by David Miller,
Chapter 20: Indeterminism and Human Freedom, Date: 1965, (This chapter
consists of sections II-IV and VI-XI from ‘Of Clouds and Clocks'; this
was the Second Arthur Holly Compton Memorial Lecture, delivered at
Washington University, St Louis, in 1965), Footnote 21, Quote Page
431, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. (Verified with
scans) [/ref]

[Begin excerpt]
… we use, and build, computers because they can do many things which
we cannot do; just as I use a pen or pencil when I wish to tot up a
sum I cannot do in my head. ‘My pencil is more intelligent than I’,
Einstein used to say.
[End excerpt]

I have not yet found direct evidence of this quotation in the writings
or speeches of Einstein.

Earlier citations and feedback welcome
Garson O’Toole

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