“ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result . ” It ’s a well - circulated quote — often printed on inspirational posters adorning classroom and authority wall — that gets invoked when someone wants to point to the futility of making the same mistake over and over again . Some assign it to famed physicistAlbert Einstein .
While Einstein is a case of wisdom who ’s come up with some prettymemorable quotation mark , the insanity definitionisn’tone of them .
Einstein is among a number of diachronic figures who are often open to misattribution due to both their renown and perceived wisdom . It ’s an well-fixed way for someone — or someone ’s meme — to quickly establish credibility for a idiom . ( Mark Twain , Marilyn Monroe , andAbraham Lincolnare some of the others . )
Garson O’Toole , author ofHemingway Did n’t Say That : The Truth Behind conversant Quotations(2017 ) , has expose several of these citations . Inexaminingthe “ insanity ” quotation mark , O’Toole found no grounds of Einstein imparting the persuasion . or else , he discovered the phrase likely originated in the other 1980s — some 25 years follow Einstein ’s death in 1955 — at 12 - stair meetings .
During a 1981 gathering of Alcoholics Anonymous , a participant was overheard by a diarist verbalise the phrase , a possible address to using other abortive strategy to deal with their sum abuse issues . It was quickly and closely echoed in a pamphlet for Narcotics Anonymous that same class , albeit in a somewhat unlike data format : “ Insanity is replicate the same mistakes and expecting unlike solution . ”
These mention seemed to be enough for the quotation to reach the zeitgeist . In a 1983 novel titledSudden Death , author Rita Mae Brown has a theatrical role using the inverted comma .
So how did this utterance saltation from Al - Anon to Einstein ? That ’s harder to pinpoint , but it was n’t really the internet ’s doing . The Einstein connectedness can be seen as far back as 1990 , when newspapers quote a territorial dominion attorney attaching the quotation to the scientist .
Accordingto Merriam - Webster , the real definition of insanity is “ a seriously disordered state of the mind commonly occurring as a specific disorder . ” precise , but not quite as catchy .
