Quick answer“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” is a famous quote by Albert Einstein. It comes from What Life Means to Einstein (interview with George Sylvester Viereck, The Saturday Evening Post). It is widely quoted on wisdom and science. In a 1929 interview, Albert Einstein told the journalist George Sylvester Viereck that imagination matters more than knowledge.
In a 1929 interview, Albert Einstein told the journalist George Sylvester Viereck that imagination matters more than knowledge. The line has since become his most quoted remark, and unlike many sayings pinned on him, this one is genuinely his.
Origin: Said by Einstein in an interview with George Sylvester Viereck, published as 'What Life Means to Einstein' in The Saturday Evening Post on 26 October 1929. Viereck asked whether Einstein trusted intuition and inspiration more than knowledge, and Einstein answered: 'I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.' The remark was reprinted in Einstein's Cosmic Religion (1931) with slightly expanded wording. No German original is known; the interview was recorded in English.
Key facts
| Quote | “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” |
|---|---|
| Author | Albert Einstein |
| Source | What Life Means to Einstein (interview with George Sylvester Viereck, The Saturday Evening Post) |
| Themes | wisdom, science |
| Language | English |
Overview
Viereck had asked Einstein whether he trusted intuition and inspiration more than knowledge, and Einstein answered as an artist would: he drew freely on his imagination. He had good reason to trust it. In 1919 two expeditions had confirmed his prediction that starlight bends near the Sun, a result he had reached years earlier by thought alone, before any test was possible. The remark is often read as if Einstein dismissed knowledge, but he meant something narrower. Knowledge, he said, is limited to what has already been found out, while imagination reaches beyond it, to what might be true. In the fuller version printed in his book Cosmic Religion (1931), he added that imagination 'embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution' and called it 'a real factor in scientific research'. It is a claim about how discovery works, not a slogan against learning.
Frequently asked questions
When did Einstein say this?
Einstein said it in an interview with the journalist George Sylvester Viereck, published in The Saturday Evening Post on 26 October 1929 under the title 'What Life Means to Einstein'. Viereck had asked him whether he trusted intuition and inspiration, and the remark was Einstein's answer.
What did Einstein mean by it?
He meant that knowledge covers only what is already known, while imagination can reach what has not been discovered yet. He was not dismissing learning: his own work rested on deep knowledge of physics. He was saying that new ideas begin when someone imagines something beyond the facts in hand.
Did Einstein really say this?
Yes. The remark is printed in the 1929 Saturday Evening Post interview, and a fuller version appears in Einstein's book Cosmic Religion (1931). It is also listed in Alice Calaprice's The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, the standard scholarly reference for his sayings.
What is the full quotation?
'I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.' That is the wording in the 1929 interview; the 1931 book version says 'embraces the entire world' instead of 'encircles the world'.
Related quotes
- “The important thing is not to stop questioning.” — Albert Einstein
- “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein
- “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” — William Shakespeare
- “An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.” — Niels Bohr
- “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” — Isaac Newton
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Last updated: . Figures are shown with their year; where sources disagree, the value is left out rather than estimated.