Who really said it

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater

Q: Did Albert Einstein say "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater"?

Yes. Genuine, and unusually well documented. Einstein wrote it from Princeton on 7 January 1943 to Barbara Lee Wilson, an American schoolgirl who had written to him four days earlier saying she was 'a little below average in mathematics.' The letter is catalogued as Einstein Archives 42-606. He wrote it in English, so unusually for an Einstein quotation there is no translator between you and his words.

Verified — a letter to a schoolgirl, 1943 Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · theoretical physicist

Verified Rights unconfirmed

Genuine, and unusually well documented. Einstein wrote it from Princeton on 7 January 1943 to Barbara Lee Wilson, an American schoolgirl who had written to him four days earlier saying she was ‘a little below average in mathematics.’ The letter is catalogued as Einstein Archives 42-606. He wrote it in English, so unusually for an Einstein quotation there is no translator between you and his words.

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

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Verified quote & credit

“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater” —Albert Einstein, letter to Barbara Lee Wilson, 7 January 1943. Einstein Archives 42-606.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Document: Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson
Dated: 7 January 1943, Princeton, New Jersey
Archive: Einstein Archives 42-606
Language: English — no translation involved

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. Princeton, 7 January 1943

Einstein’s English, as written. Note what he does not do: he does not tell her mathematics is easy, or that she will grow into it. He tells a thirteen-year-old that his own difficulties are worse than hers, which is both a kindness and, at that point in his career, arguably true.

The letter, with archive citation 42-606

How we traced it

The exchange is dated on both sides: Barbara Wilson wrote on 3 January 1943 to say she was a little below average in mathematics, and Einstein replied on 7 January — a four-day turnaround from a man then at the height of his fame.
The letter carries an archive number, 42-606, in the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An archive number is the strongest kind of provenance a quotation can have: it means a physical document exists and can be requested about the archive ↗.
It is published in Alice Calaprice’s collections of Einstein’s correspondence and quotations, cited to that archive number. One honest caveat: we verified the archive citation through sourced quotation databases rather than by inspecting the printed page, so we give no page number sourced text ↗.

Rights are unresolved in the United States — treat with care. Einstein died in 1955, so the text has been public domain in the UK and EU since 1 January 2026. In the US, however, the term for a letter first published decades after it was written runs from that publication, which for this letter appears to be 2002 — potentially into the 2040s — and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem actively asserts rights in Einstein’s writings. Because he wrote in English there is no separate translator’s copyright, but a modern editor’s notes and apparatus are their own. Quote the sentence with attribution; do not treat it as free stock content. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

What to watch for

The attribution is sound and the document is catalogued. The things that go wrong here are small — wording drift and an assumption about rights.

Small variants in circulation minor drift

You will see ‘mathematics’ lower-cased, a semicolon in place of the full stop, and an added ‘that’ — ‘I can assure you that mine are still greater.’ The form carried with the 42-606 citation has two sentences, a capital M, and no ‘that.’

Not automatically free US status unresolved

People assume anything by a man who died in 1955 is public domain. In the US the clock on a letter first published in 2002 may run for decades yet, and the Hebrew University asserts rights. UK and EU are clear as of 2026; the US is not.

Not about failing school context

It is often quoted as Einstein confessing he was bad at maths — a persistent myth. He was not: he was an accomplished mathematician reassuring a child, and the ‘difficulties’ he meant were those of a working physicist at the frontier of the subject.

Genuinely Einstein — a letter of 7 January 1943 to the schoolgirl Barbara Lee Wilson, catalogued as Einstein Archives 42-606 and written in English the source ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the perfect thing to say to a discouraged student, because it refuses the usual comfort. He does not promise it will get easier or tell her she is cleverer than she thinks; he simply moves her from the category of people who struggle into the category that includes him.

The date gives it extra weight. January 1943 — the middle of the war, Einstein in exile at Princeton and consulting for the US Navy — and he answered a thirteen-year-old’s letter about her maths grade within four days.

He does not tell her it gets easier. He tells her his own difficulties are worse.

The exchange, in order

3 January 1943: Barbara Lee Wilson writes to Einstein saying she is a little below average in mathematics.

7 January 1943: Einstein replies from Princeton, in English, in two sentences.

The reply is catalogued as Einstein Archives 42-606 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

It was published for a general readership in 2002, in a collection of his correspondence with children.

He kept answering children’s letters personally for the rest of his life.

Explore

Filed under

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

Knowledge Humility

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.

Einstein to Barbara Wilson, 7 January 1943libquotes.com

The verbatim text with recipient, date and the Einstein Archives number 42-606.

Einstein on mathematics — sourced quotationstodayinsci.com

A sourced Einstein quotation dictionary carrying the same letter and date.

The Albert Einstein Archivesen.wikipedia.org

Background on the Hebrew University archive whose catalogue number anchors this quotation.

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 won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is the most misquoted scientist in history, which makes the genuine items worth guarding — and he kept up a remarkable correspondence with children, answering schoolchildren’s letters personally for decades. A whole volume of those replies has been published; this is among the most quoted of them, and one of the few Einstein lines with an archive number attached.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson, 7 January 1943. Einstein Archives 42-606. Published in Alice Calaprice, Dear Professor Einstein (2002).

MLA (9th ed.)

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson. 7 Jan. 1943. Einstein Archives 42-606.

APA (7th ed.)

Einstein, A. (1943, January 7). Letter to Barbara Lee Wilson (Einstein Archives 42-606).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/do-not-worry-about-your-difficulties-in-mathematics