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Who really said it

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones

Verified — Einstein, in a 1949 interview Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · theoretical physicist
Verified Rights unconfirmed

Genuine, and better documented than most Einstein lines. It comes from an interview with Alfred Werner published in Liberal Judaism 16 in April–May 1949, catalogued as Einstein Archives 30-1104 and printed with that citation in Alice Calaprice’s The New Quotable Einstein (2005), p. 173. Two honest caveats, though. The sourced wording begins ‘I know not,’ not ‘I do not know.’ And Einstein was not the first to make the joke: an unnamed US Army lieutenant at Bikini Atoll got there in 1946.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” —Albert Einstein, interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April–May 1949). Einstein Archives 30-1104. Sourced wording: "I know not with what weapons…"

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Document
Interview with Alfred Werner
Published
Liberal Judaism 16, April–May 1949
Archive
Einstein Archives 30-1104
Printed in
Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein (2005), p. 173

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. Liberal Judaism, April–May 1949

The wording as it is sourced to the archive. Four years after Hiroshima, the most famous physicist alive is not predicting a weapon — he is predicting the absence of one. The line works because it skips the third war entirely and shows you the fourth.

Wikiquote — the sourced entry with archive number 30-1104

How we traced it

  • The citation is unusually complete for an Einstein quotation: a named interviewer, a named magazine, a date, an archive number and a page in the standard scholarly collection. Alice Calaprice’s books are the reference work that separates the real Einstein from the invented one, and this line sits in the sourced section, not the doubtful one the sourced entry ↗.
  • Then the wording. The form carried with the 30-1104 citation is ‘I know not with what weapons…’ The ‘I do not know’ opening — the one everybody actually quotes, and the one on this page — is attached instead to an unidentified letter to Harry Truman, reported without an archive location. So the popular wording is a smoothing of the sourced one.
  • And the idea is older than Einstein’s use of it. Walter Winchell’s syndicated column of 23 September 1946 relayed Joe Laitin’s report of reporters at Bikini Atoll asking an army lieutenant what weapons the next war would use: ‘I dunno, but in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!’ Einstein appears with a version in The Rotarian in June 1948 — ‘They’ll use rocks!’ — and General Omar Bradley with a bows-and-arrows version in 1949 the 1946 trail ↗.

Rights are unresolved in the United States. Einstein died in 1955, so his words have been public domain in the UK and EU since 1 January 2026. The US position is genuinely murky here: the sentence was published in a US periodical in 1949, and a 1949 US periodical’s copyright depended on notice and renewal, which we have not checked — meanwhile the Hebrew University of Jerusalem actively asserts rights in Einstein’s writings, and the interviewer’s framing text is his own work, not Einstein’s. Quote the sentence with attribution and the 1949 source; do not treat it as free stock content. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

What to watch for

Einstein really said this, and the citation holds up. What goes wrong is subtler: the wording drifts, and people credit him with inventing an idea that was already a joke in the newsroom three years earlier.

‘I know not’, not ‘I do not know’ drift

The form tied to Einstein Archives 30-1104 opens ‘I know not with what weapons…’ The smoother ‘I do not know’ opening — the one on this page, because it is the form people search for — is attached to an unidentified letter to President Truman with no archive location given. If you are citing the archive, cite the archive’s wording.

Spears, rocks, bows and arrows, sticks and stones four versions

The Rotarian of June 1948 has Einstein saying ‘They’ll use rocks!’ General Omar Bradley is credited in 1949 with ‘bows and arrows.’ The 1946 original said ‘spears.’ ‘Sticks and stones’ is the wording that won, and it is the one in the sourced 1949 interview.

Not Einstein’s idea first he repeated it

An unnamed US Army lieutenant at the Bikini Atoll bomb tests made the joke to reporters in 1946, three years before the Werner interview. Einstein said it; he did not coin it. Both statements are true at once, and quote sites routinely report only the flattering one the 1946 trail ↗.

Genuinely Einstein — interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16, April–May 1949, Einstein Archives 30-1104 — but the joke was already circulating in 1946, and the sourced wording is ‘I know not’ the sourced entry ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the most efficient sentence anyone has written about nuclear weapons. No casualty figures, no politics, no moralising — just a shrug about the equipment list for a war two conflicts away, and you have worked out for yourself that civilisation is gone in between.

It also gets its force from who is saying it. Einstein’s 1939 letter to Roosevelt helped set the bomb in motion, and he spent his last decade arguing against it. A joke about spears lands differently from the man who did the arithmetic.

He said it. He just didn't think of it first — a lieutenant at Bikini Atoll did, in 1946.

The versions, in order

23 September 1946: Walter Winchell’s column relays an unnamed army lieutenant at Bikini Atoll — ‘in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!’

November 1946: Reader’s Digest prints Joe Laitin’s version of the same exchange.

June 1948: The Rotarian carries an Einstein version — ‘They’ll use rocks!’

April–May 1949: the Alfred Werner interview in Liberal Judaism — ‘sticks and stones’, catalogued as Einstein Archives 30-1104.

1949: General Omar Bradley is separately credited with a ‘bows and arrows’ version.

The ‘I do not know’ wording circulates via an unidentified letter to Truman, with no archive location ever produced.

Explore

Filed under

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

Power Mortality

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 quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Carries the line with the Werner interview, the Liberal Judaism date, Einstein Archives 30-1104 and the Calaprice page, plus the variants.
The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spearsquoteinvestigator.com

Traces the joke back past Einstein to an unnamed army lieutenant at Bikini Atoll, reported by Walter Winchell in September 1946.
World War III — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Collects the competing versions — spears, rocks, bows and arrows, sticks and stones — side by side.

The true author

About Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

1879–1955 · theoretical physicist

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) developed the theory of relativity and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. By 1949 he was also the world’s most quotable pacifist: the man whose 1939 letter to Roosevelt helped start the Manhattan Project spent his last decade campaigning against the thing it produced, chairing the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists and giving interviews like this one. That biography is exactly why the line stuck to him rather than to the lieutenant who thought of it — coming from Einstein, it sounds like a forecast rather than a wisecrack.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Einstein, Albert. Interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April–May 1949). Einstein Archives 30-1104; cited in Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein (2005), p. 173.

MLA (9th ed.)

Einstein, Albert. Interview with Alfred Werner. Liberal Judaism, vol. 16, Apr.–May 1949. Einstein Archives 30-1104.

APA (7th ed.)

Einstein, A. (1949). Interview with Alfred Werner. Liberal Judaism, 16 (Einstein Archives 30-1104).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-do-not-know-with-what-weapons-world-war-iii-will-be

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