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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

German quotation expert Gerald Krieghofer kindly examined this topic
upon my request, and he found a wonderful 1936 citation. I’ve updated
the QI article and changes should be visible within 48 hours.

[Begin excerpt from updated QI article]
Adolf von Harnack was a German theologian and Church historian who
died in 1930. His daughter Agnes von Zahn-Harnack published his
biography in 1936. She remarked that her father once wrote a complex
book quite quickly. To explain this extraordinary performance Adolf
von Harnack employed the saying. Below is an excerpt in German
followed by a translation:

[ref] 1936 Copyright, Adolf von Harnack by Agnes von Zahn-Harnack,
Chapter: Die Dogmengeschichte (The History of Dogma), Quote Page 134,
Hans Bott Verlag, Berlin-Tempelhof, Germany. (Verified with scans)
link [/ref]

https://archive.org/details/adolfvonharnack0000zahn/page/134/mode/1up?q=%22Meine+Feder%22

[Begin excerpt from 1936 book]
Dreizehn Monate sind für eine solche Niederschrift eine kurze Zeit;
Harnack aber hat oft geschildert, wie er sich in solchen Perioden
gesteigerter Produktion von geistigen Kräften beflügelt fühlte, über
die er sich selbst kaum Rechenschaft geben konnte, und er pflegte wohl
bei der Durchsicht des Geschriebenen zu sagen: „Meine Feder ist klüger
als ich.“
[End excerpt from 1936 book]

[Begin translation]
Thirteen months is a short time for such writing; But Harnack has
often described how he felt inspired in such periods of increased
production by mental powers about which he could hardly give an
account, and he used to say when examining what he had written: “My
pen is cleverer than I.”
[End translation]
[End excerpt from updated QI article]

Garson O’Toole

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 7:30 AM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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