What Albert Einstein really said!

 

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Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, ‘Everybody 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.’ From these words, many people have got great comfort and encouragement, and rightly so. However, there’s every indication that this quotation is, in fact, a fake as far as Einstein is concerned. The quotation is not in any definitive, authenticated list of Einstein’s many sourced sayings or quotable quotes. Actually, the first written reference you can find to it is in a book written by Matthew Kelly, published in 2004, nearly half a century after Albert Einstein’s death in 1955. 

 

However, at the same time, there are quite a number of genuine Albert Einstein quotations about spiritual matters. Let’s have a look at some of them for a few minutes. The first area we’ll look at is Einstein’s view of the universe and its creator. 

Climate Change

 

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I’m sure you’ve noticed that commenters on weather conditions in the UK over the last few years increasingly include such words as ‘brightest, coldest, driest, dullest, hottest, stillest, wettest, or windiest’. Even the most sceptical among us must surely recognise that extremes of weather are unmistakably the order of the day. 

 

Most people put this climate change down to global warming – currently running at about 1.5 degrees Celsius per century. Over the same time scale as this so-far relentless increase in temperature, the global carbon dioxide level has risen by over 22% and is still increasing, in fact, accelerating! As this is due to human activity, the story would seem clear – carbon dioxide is a so-called greenhouse gas that causes a temperature increase and that, in turn, results in a disturbance of the earth’s weather systems. Really, something should be done about it. However, some people are still not convinced. 

Getting a Deep Clean

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 In January 2016, in N. Ireland there was an outbreak of a bacterial infection called Pseudomonas Aeruginosa. In a two-week period it caused the death of three infants. This infection causes breathing difficulties and tissue damage. It is reported that the bacteria can take hold in areas such as sinks and in water pipes with stagnant water and can live for several days on various surfaces. A university bacteriologist reportedly said that this is a bug which is very common in nature. The hospital ordered a deep clean of the neo-natal ward involved and succeeded in eradicating the infection.