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Who really said it

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth

Verified — but the English is a translator's choice Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · theoretical physicist
Verified Rights unconfirmed

Genuine. Einstein wrote it on 8 July 1901, aged twenty-two, in a letter to Jost Winteler — his former boarding-house host in Aarau — after the editor of Annalen der Physik dismissed his criticisms out of hand. The German is ‘Autoritätsdusel ist der grösste Feind der Wahrheit’. The catch: Autoritätsdusel is an archaic colloquialism with no clean English equivalent, so every English version you have seen is a translator’s decision, not Einstein’s words.

Last verified 20 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth” German original: "Autoritätsdusel ist der grösste Feind der Wahrheit." —Albert Einstein, letter to Jost Winteler, 8 July 1901 (CPAE 1:115). English wording varies by translator.

Can you use it?

The German original is safely attributable to Einstein — the letter to Jost Winteler, 8 July 1901 (CPAE Vol. 1, Doc. 115) — and has been public domain in the UK and EU since 1 January 2026, though its US status is unresolved. But any specific published English translation carries its own copyright, so quote the German and cite the document number, adding a plain gloss of your own rather than lifting a named translator’s sentence. Not legal advice.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Document
Letter to Jost Winteler
Dated
8 July 1901
Citation
Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 1, Doc. 115
Language
German — every English version is a translation

Autoritätsdusel ist der grösste Feind der Wahrheit. Letter to Jost Winteler, 8 July 1901

Einstein’s German. Dusel means something like a daze or befuddlement, so Autoritätsdusel is roughly ‘authority-daze’ — being punch-drunk on authority. English has no single word for it, which is why the translations diverge so widely; the Einstein Papers Project’s own published rendering is ‘authority gone to one’s head is the greatest enemy of truth.’

Wikiquote — the German original, sourced to CPAE Vol. 1

How we traced it

  • The letter is catalogued in the scholarly edition of Einstein’s papers as Volume 1, Document 115, and is quoted in the biography The Private Lives of Albert Einstein (1993). The recipient, Jost Winteler, had housed Einstein as a schoolboy in Aarau Wikiquote, sourced ↗.
  • The occasion is small and human: Paul Drude, editing Annalen der Physik, had brushed aside the young Einstein’s objections to his electron theory of metals. The line is written in irritation, not as a philosophical maxim.
  • An attempt to debunk the English wording as a fabrication was withdrawn by its own author, who concluded he had been wrong to call the line fake and added that he was no longer sure which English rendering is best. German speakers and an Einstein Papers translator in the thread proposed different wordings — from ‘unthinking acceptance of authority’ to ‘authority gone to one’s head’ — so what was settled was that the letter is real, not that any one English version is definitive the retracted debunk ↗.

Mixed, and worth reading before reuse. The German original has been public domain in the UK and EU since 1 January 2026 (Einstein died in 1955); its US status depends on first publication in the scholarly edition and is unresolved. Separately, any specific published English translation carries its own copyright — the scholarly edition’s translation volumes and the 1993 biography’s rendering are each protected. The safest practice, and the one we follow here, is to quote the German and cite the document number, adding a plain gloss of your own rather than lifting a named translator’s sentence. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What to watch for

The attribution is solid — a dated letter with a scholarly document number. The difficulty is entirely linguistic, and it is the reason this quote keeps getting accused of being fake.

No canonical version exists translation, not quotation

‘Blind belief in authority,’ ‘blind obedience to authority,’ ‘unthinking respect for authority’ and ‘a foolish faith in authority’ are all in circulation — and the Einstein Papers Project’s own published translation renders it ‘authority gone to one’s head is the greatest enemy of truth.’ Even that, the nearest thing to an official version, is one choice among several: he wrote one German noun, and English has no equivalent.

Withdrawn debunk retracted

The popular English was once flagged as an invention. The author of that debunking later withdrew it himself, concluding he had been wrong to call the line fake — while adding that he remained unsure which English rendering is best. The letter is real; only the English wording is negotiable the thread ↗.

A snubbed 22-year-old context lost

Quoted today as a grand statement about science and dogma. Written as a private complaint about a journal editor who would not engage with his criticism.

Genuinely Einstein, in a letter to Jost Winteler of 8 July 1901 — but he wrote Autoritätsdusel, and no English word carries it, so treat the familiar sentence as a good translation rather than his exact words the German ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the founding sentiment of the scientific temperament, delivered by the person most often invoked as an authority — which gives it a pleasing recursive edge whenever someone quotes it to win an argument.

What makes it better than its reputation is how petty the occasion was. A twenty-two-year-old with no job and no position writes to an old family friend to complain that an editor would not take his criticism seriously, and produces a line that outlives the editor, the journal issue, and the argument.

He wrote one German noun. English needs a whole phrase, and still misses it.

The word that will not translate

Dusel in German means a daze, a stupor, a befuddled state — also, colloquially, dumb luck.

Autoritätsdusel is therefore closer to ‘authority-daze’: not belief in authority, but being punch-drunk on it.

‘Blind belief’ catches the blindness but loses the stupor; ‘unthinking respect’ catches the thoughtlessness but sounds far too polite.

Because no rendering is definitive, quoting the German and citing document 115 is both the most accurate and the safest option.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Doubt

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Albert Einstein — Wikiquote (sourced)en.wikiquote.org

The German original with the 8 July 1901 date, recipient and scholarly citation.
The 'debunk' that was retractedmetabunk.org

A useful thread: an attempt to prove the quote fake, withdrawn once German speakers weighed in on Autoritätsdusel.
The 'unthinking respect' variantlibquotes.com

Shows how far the English renderings spread from a single German noun.

The true author

About Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

1879–1955 · theoretical physicist

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity and was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics (presented in 1922). This line comes from long before any of that: he was twenty-two, unemployed, recently graduated and unable to get an academic post, and had just been patronised by a journal editor. The scepticism toward authority it expresses was not a late elder-statesman pose — it was there at the very beginning, and it was personal.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Jost Winteler, 8 July 1901. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 1, Doc. 115.

MLA (9th ed.)

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Jost Winteler. 8 July 1901. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 1, doc. 115.

APA (7th ed.)

Einstein, A. (1901, July 8). Letter to Jost Winteler. In The collected papers of Albert Einstein (Vol. 1, Doc. 115).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/blind-belief-in-authority-is-the-greatest-enemy-of-truth/

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