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Who really said it

God does not play dice with the universe

The thought is Einstein's — the sentence isn't Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · theoretical physicist
Attributed Rights unconfirmed

Einstein wrote the underlying line to Max Born on 4 December 1926: “Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der Alte nicht würfelt” — at any rate, I am convinced that the Old One does not throw dice. He wrote der Alte, not Gott; he did not say ‘with the universe’; and the familiar sentence welds together two clauses that sit apart in the letter.

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

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“God does not play dice with the universe” Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der Alte nicht würfelt. (At any rate, I am convinced that the Old One does not throw dice.) —Albert Einstein, letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Document
Letter, Einstein to Max Born
Dated
4 December 1926, written in German
Published
The Born–Einstein Letters, trans. Irene Born (Walker & Co., 1971)
Author
Albert Einstein, 1879–1955

Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr achtung-gebietend. Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, daß das doch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der Alte nicht würfelt. Letter to Max Born, 1926

The closing lines of the 1926 letter. The famous English quotation is a compression of the last two sentences — and swaps ‘the Old One’ for ‘God.’

Albert Einstein — sourced quotations (Wikiquote)

How we traced it

  • The passage is from Einstein’s letter to Max Born of 4 December 1926, published in The Born–Einstein Letters. Irene Born’s translation runs: ‘Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing… The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the “old one.” I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice’ German and English side by side ↗.
  • Einstein’s word is der Alte — ‘the Old One,’ his habitual, half-affectionate name for whatever sets the laws — not Gott. Rendering it ‘God’ imports a theological weight the German does not carry what Einstein meant ↗.
  • Neither ‘with the universe’ nor the single-sentence structure appears in the letter: the popular line fuses ‘the secret of the Old One’ with ‘does not throw dice’ and adds an object of its own the letters ↗.

Mixed, and worth care. Einstein died in 1955, so his German original is out of copyright in the EU and UK (life plus 70, expired 1 January 2026). Its US status is genuinely unresolved: the letter was unpublished in 1926 and first published in 1969–71, which under the US rule for previously-unpublished works can extend protection past 2026. Separately, Irene Born’s 1971 English translation carries its own live copyright. Safest course: quote the German with attribution, keep the Born translation to a short cited excerpt, or translate it yourself. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

Right thinker, rewritten sentence

Nobody is wrong about who thought this — it is Einstein, and the letter is dated and published. What circulates is a tidied English sentence he never wrote, and the tidying changed the meaning in at least two places.

Einstein wrote der Alte mistranslated

‘Der Alte’ is ‘the Old One’ — a wry personification Einstein used for the order behind physical law. Translating it ‘God’ recruits him for a theological claim he spent years disclaiming context ↗.

Added later words not in the source

The letter says only that the Old One does not throw dice. ‘With the universe’ is an English addition that appears nowhere in the German.

Compression spliced

The popular quotation fuses the ‘secret of the Old One’ clause with the dice clause. In the letter they are separate sentences making separate points full passage ↗.

Genuinely Einstein’s conviction, from a documented 1926 letter — but ‘God does not play dice with the universe’ is a paraphrase, not a quotation sourced text ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

Einstein was not making a religious statement; he was losing an argument about physics. Quantum mechanics had begun to describe the world in probabilities, and he could not accept that chance sat at the bottom of reality rather than at the limit of our knowledge.

Born kept the letters for forty-five years and published them with his own commentary — which is why one of the most-quoted sentences in science exists only as a compressed English rendering of a private German aside.

Der Alte würfelt nicht.

What the letter actually says

German: ‘Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der Alte nicht würfelt.’

Literal: ‘At any rate, I am convinced that the Old One does not throw dice.’

Born’s 1971 translation: ‘I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.’

Popular form: ‘God does not play dice with the universe’ — three changes from the original.

Explore

Filed under

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

Knowledge Truth

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 — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

The 1926 Born letter in German with Irene Born’s translation, and the popular one-liner listed separately.
What Einstein meant by 'God does not play dice'aeon.co

Jim Baggott on the letter, the der Alte reading, and what Einstein was actually objecting to in quantum mechanics.
Einstein's letters on quantum physicslivescience.com

Independent confirmation of the letter’s date, recipient and content.

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. His long resistance to the probabilistic core of quantum mechanics produced this line in private correspondence with Max Born — part of a decades-long argument Born ultimately felt Einstein lost. Einstein used ‘der Alte’ and similar figures often; he was not describing a personal deity, a point he made repeatedly when readers assumed otherwise.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926. In The Born–Einstein Letters, translated by Irene Born. New York: Walker and Company, 1971.

MLA (9th ed.)

Einstein, Albert. Letter to Max Born. 4 Dec. 1926. The Born–Einstein Letters, translated by Irene Born, Walker and Company, 1971.

APA (7th ed.)

Einstein, A. (1971). Letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926 (I. Born, Trans.). In The Born–Einstein letters. Walker and Company. (Original work written 1926)

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘God does not play dice with the universe’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/god-does-not-play-dice-with-the-universe

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