Rita Mae Brown

American novelist · b. 1944 · put the line in print in 1983

Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944) is an American novelist and memoirist, best known for Rubyfruit Jungle (1973). Her 1983 tennis-world mystery Sudden Death contains the earliest widely-read print version of the “insanity” line — voiced by a character, and pointedly not credited to Einstein. The saying itself arose anonymously in 12-step recovery communities around 1981.

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“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

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