Famous and inspirational quotes are often attributed to Albert Einstein.<\/p>\n
An\u00a0April 12 Facebook post\u00a0features a cartoon drawing of\u00a0several animals, including an elephant, a monkey and a penguin,\u00a0standing before a teacher. The teachers says,\u00a0“For a fair selection everybody has to take the same exam: please climb that tree.”<\/p>\n
Underneath is the subhead, “Our education system,” and below is a quote attributed to Einstein: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”<\/p>\n
The post\u00a0has been shared more than 100,000 times.\u00a0Similar posts have been shared on Pinterest and Twitter.<\/p>\n
Fact check:<\/strong>\u00a0Quote about ‘fear of weapons’ misattributed to Sigmund Freud<\/span><\/p>\n It’s an interesting point. But Einstein isn’t the one who made it.<\/p>\n In a book\u00a0by\u00a0Garson O\u2019Toole, “Hemingway Didn\u2019t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations,” the author notes the quote in question has often been misattributed to Einstein.<\/p>\n According to History.com, O’Toole looks into quotations attributed to well-known historic figures, such as\u00a0Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain,\u00a0Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe. He also\u00a0runs the Quote Investigator website.<\/p>\n The exact origin of this quote is unclear.\u00a0But O’Toole\u00a0noted on his website an array of similar allegories on animals in school dating to the 1800s in various journals and newspapers.<\/p>\n “The long history of fables about animals in schools almost certainly influenced the construction of this quotation,” O’Toole wrote on Quote Investigator. “There is no substantive evidence connecting Einstein to the quotation.”<\/p>\n In the book, O’Toole analyzes six quotes supposedly uttered by Einstein:<\/p>\n The one in the Facebook post\u00a0illustrates\u00a0the mistaken belief\u00a0of judging someone by a skill or ability they don’t possess, but Einstein never said it.<\/p>\n In his book “Ideas and Opinions,” Einstein wrote, “There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind.”<\/p>\n That casts doubt on the idea he would say everybody is a genius.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fact check: <\/strong>Fake quote calls Biden supporters a ‘confederacy of fools’<\/span><\/p>\n The quote also does not appear in “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein\u201d\u00a0from Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n The claim that Albert Einstein said, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid,” is FALSE, based on our research. The quote is misattributed to Einstein.<\/p>\nQuote is misattributed to Einstein<\/h2>\n
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Our rating: False<\/h2>\n
Our fact-checking sources:<\/h2>\n