Monday, April 29, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Albert Einstein

« All quotes from this author
 

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.
--
The earliest published source located on google books attributing this to Einstein is the 2000 book The Internet Handbook for Writers, Researchers, and Journalists by Mary McGuire, p. 14. It was attributed to him on the internet before that, as in this post from 1997. Variants of the quote can be found well before this however, as in the 1989 book Urban Surface Water Management by S. G. Walesh, which on p. 315 contains the statement (said to have been 'stated anonymously'): "The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a challenge and opportunity beyond imagination." Even earlier, the article "A Paper Industry Application of Systems Engineering and Direct Digital Control" by H. D. Couture, Jr. and M. A. Keyes, which appears in the 1969 Advances in Instrumentation: Vol 24, Part 4, has a statement on this page which uses phrasing similar to the supposed Einstein quote in describing computers and people: "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. On the other hand, a well trained operator as compared with a computer is incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant." Variants with slightly different wording can be found earlier than 1969, as in this April 1968 article. The earliest source located, and most likely the origin of this saying, is an article titled "Problems, Too, Have Problems" by John Pfeiffer, which appeared in the October 1961 issue of Fortune magazine. As quoted here, Pfeiffer's article contained the line "Man is a slow, sloppy, and brilliant thinker; computers are fast, accurate, and stupid."

 
Albert Einstein

» Albert Einstein - all quotes »



Tags: Albert Einstein Quotes, Authors starting by E


Similar quotes

 

Charlotte Gainsbourg: "Madonna was incredibly quick and professional. I was unable to say anything else than 'Hello','I’ll listen to it' and 'Good-bye' [when she asked to use a few lines from "The Cement Garden" for her song, "What it Feels Like for a Girl"]. That was incredibly stupid of me. Madonna was the idol of my youth and I grew up listening to her music."

 
Madonna Ciccone
 

Charlotte Gainsbourg: "Madonna was incredibly quick and professional. I was unable to say anything else than 'Hello','I’ll listen to it' and 'Good-bye' [when she asked to use a few lines from "The Cement Garden" for her song, "What it Feels Like for a Girl"]. That was incredibly stupid of me. Madonna was the idol of my youth and I grew up listening to her music."

 
Madonna
 

They either overcompensate for the way they feel and are incredibly sycophantic or incredibly brusque in order to prove they don't think you're superior.

 
Lucy Lawless
 

Just because you've always done it that way; doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid.

 
Anonymous
 

We can either be monsters or angels. We are able to be demons and angels, as that book says. We are able to be incredibly creative or to be incredibly destructive. We have that decision to make, to create something. It could be grotesque and ugly, but it is monstrously beautiful, so it inspires people.

 
Julie Taymor
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact