People love their Einstein quotes. Einstein is the one person we all recognize as GENIUS!!! so we imagine — kind of absurdly — that anything that popped out of his noggin is genuisish.
"A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness."
He wrote that at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. I wonder if he was trying to crank out something that the Japanese bellboy would see as wise — some Japanese-sounding wisdom.
IN THE COMMENTS: Leslie Graves said:
The Imperial Hotel! Presumably, he was in the version of it that lasted from 1922-1967, and that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a man who did not live a calm and modest life.Yes, the article says 1922.
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Think of the career he could have had writing fortune cookies. Sad.
Cheapskate. I'll have to try that.
If it is still around, presumably the Japanese bellhop held on to it and conceivably sold it to someone for something. I don't think anyone will ever pay over a million bucks for anything I write; at least not since I no longer practice law and cannot write anything that my E&O carrier will have to cover.
So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.
I think he's right.
Gary Larson captured this in the strip, Einstein and son:
"You want to have to use your brain your whole life like me? No kid of mine's going through that hell. Here, learn to dribble this thing."
The Imperial Hotel! Presumably, he was in the version of it that lasted from 1922-1967, and that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a man who did not live a calm and modest life.
http://franklloydwright.org/site/imperial-hotel-lobby-reconstruction/
I understand that Picasso used to do the same thing. I also read somewhere that he never could get people to cash his check because they wanted to save his signature. Urban myths?
If he were so smart, he would have written it in Japanese
rehajm said...
So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.
LOL
Supposedly Rodin paid a plumber who had been their several days with a scribble he made on the spot at his coffee table.
Cheap bastard.
BTW, Einstein is right.
It's funny how Einstein springs to mind when the term 'genius' is used. Personally, I would call Shakespeare the greater genius. And da Vinci.
Blogger Ignorance is Bliss said...
rehajm said...
So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.
LOL
The Dalai Lama's top was better.
"I wonder if he was trying to crank out something." Can't leave it at that. Einstein calls for Althousian deconstruction.
He seems to be assuming happiness is worth striving for. But why? He didn't seem to do that himself; he had higher ambitions. It's so condescending! In fact, it's doubly condescending: trite cheapskatery combined with the blithe assumption that ordinary people have nothing better to do than trying to be happy. Ugh!
And who is he to talk about modesty? He wasn't modest at all! He is saying: here, take my words in lieu of payment. Immodestly advocating modesty is crude hypocrisy. You'd expect something more amusing, something more interesting from a genius. Bob Dylan would have been ashamed of writing such a fortune-cookie phrase. Which makes me think that, when it comes to things that matter, physics is overrated.
And what if you are the restless seeker type--being calm and modest must be so boring! No one can be happy while being bored.
Anyway, something like that.
What he should have written down was the bellhop's name, so he could later go find him and give him his millipn-yen tip! Putz! Plus his life advice sucks.
Perhaps he was just flattering the Bellboy
Better fortune cookie: "A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success"
A genius would drop the redundant preposition.
Isaack Newton was an elfin genius if ever there was one.
And what if you are the restless seeker type
That's a good point. I guess the point of his little saying, which I agree is kind of wordy, is that if you are not constantly driven for success, and manage a calm and modest life, don't feel bad about it, it's pretty good, better than most!
Sometimes, words get hard to type when we fashion them in a novel way. Such as, "genuisish".
My favorite, Before science proved that every god but Gaia is dead
"Before God we are equally wise, and equally foolish."
http://www.mundarda.wordpress.com
If getting somebody to pay $1.5MM for a piece of paper ain't genius, then I don't know what is!
Reminds me of that scene in Caddyshack where Bill Murray's character recounts his Dalai Lama story.
Einstein, like most brilliant scientists, said a lot of stupid things when he strayed from his bailiwick. But this isn't one of them.
Who knew that stars writing stuff could be so valuable? Cool way to make dough.
But sometimes it's harder to monetize:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/politics/donald-trump-sign-woman-chest-rally-virginia/index.html
F. Lloyd Wright was a genius, and he didn't mind saying so.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/unrealfacts.com/einstein-womanizer-wear-silk-robe-flash-women/amp/.
Somebody dropped a 'W'
I've always found pieces of advice like that to be trite and almost always delivered from people who can't really be sure it is true. Einstein was extremely ambitious in his pursuit of academic excellence. I've heard countless rich CEO's at conferences talking about how little money and title matter. It's disingenuous.
If a Christian leaves a Bible verse in lieu of a tip, they are douchebags.
If a Christian leaves a Bible verse in lieu of a tip, they are douchebags.
It's a better witness to leave both. ;-)
Apparently, most of the roof's of FLW design leak... even Eddie's doghouse.
That's not even *original* genuisness. It's a ripoff of Proverbs 15:16: Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.
Well, 1.5 mill discounted at 6 per cent over 90 years is $8,000 so old Einstein was a pretty big tipper!
Especially $8000 1922 dollars.
Is that from Proverbs? I thought maybe Albert got it from his fortune cookie.
Genius used the power of zero.
Calm and modest life does not describe Einstein's. He may not have been bothered much by common pursuits, but his obsessions ran deep.
Einstein had prepared the final form of the equations for that talk and had to work hard, relatively to the standards of this "lazy dog":
“One thing is for sure, that I’ve never been so plagued in my life,” wrote Einstein at the time. “Smoking like a chimney, working like a steed, eating without thought, sleeping irregularly.”
His wife Elsa remembered that he was absent-minded in the last two weeks or so and sometimes played the piano mindlessly or stared blankly to the space as if he were Witten. Einstein was exhausted and stinking of cigarettes during the talk (strangely, he only allowed to be photographed with tobacco pipes which "contributed to his calm and objective judgment", he stressed; Albert remembered that to beat his doctor, his grandfather smoke cigarette butts from the street) but he gave us his general relativity. The content of papers was more or less ready but they only appeared in 1916.
In fairness to Einstein I heard that at the time tipping was not customary or acceptable in Japan.
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