Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

I Understand It Brings You Luck, Whether You Believe in It or Not

Not Einstein — a Niels Bohr anecdote Niels Bohr 1885–1962 · Danish theoretical physicist · Nobel Prize in Physics, 1922
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

For its first thirty years, every documented telling of the horseshoe story that names anyone at all names the Danish physicist Niels Bohr — beginning with the earliest known printing, Stockholm’s Svenska Dagbladet of 4 January 1956 — while two retellings, in 1959 and 1973, leave the physicist unnamed. Einstein does not enter the story until a Washington Post column of 26 June 1986, whose author already hedged it as “perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not” — and Quote Investigator ↗ found no direct evidence for the remark in Bohr’s own writings either, so this is a Bohr anecdote rather than a documented Bohr quotation.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I Understand It Brings You Luck, Whether You Believe in It or Not” Not Albert Einstein. The horseshoe anecdote — "Of course I don't believe in it, but I understand it brings you luck, whether you believe in it or not." — is told of the Danish physicist Niels Bohr in every documented version that names anyone at all, from its earliest known printing (Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, 4 January 1956) onward; two retellings, in 1959 and 1973, leave the physicist unnamed. Einstein does not appear in the story until a Washington Post column of 26 June 1986, whose author called it "perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not." Quote Investigator found no direct evidence for the remark in Bohr's own writings either, and Wikiquote lists it under Disputed — so it is a Bohr anecdote, not a sourced Bohr quotation. — Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Of course not. But I understand it's lucky whether you believe in it or not.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Albert Einstein. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Niels Bohr — Danish theoretical physicist · Nobel Prize in Physics, 1922. Theme: "I Understand It Brings You Luck, Whether You Believe in It or Not". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I Understand It Brings You Luck, Whether You Believe in It or Not". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The earliest documented telling

Earliest known printing
Svenska Dagbladet
Published
4 January 1956, Stockholm — quote page 8, column 6; article headed “Det påstås”
Translation
Swedish original; the English rendering is Quote Investigator’s. The earliest English printing verified on paper is The American Weekly, 30 September 1956 — an earlier 1956 English sighting, in Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, is unverified
Einstein version
Not documented until The Washington Post, 26 June 1986, page A24 — thirty years later

“Niels, it can’t possibly be that you, a brilliant scientist, believe that foolish horseshoe superstition!” — “Of course not,” replied the scientist. “But I understand it’s lucky whether you believe in it or not.” “The Wit Parade” by E. E. Kenyon · 30 September 1956

This is the earliest English printing verified on paper (Quote Investigator lists one earlier 1956 English sighting, in Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, that it expressly could not verify), and the closest period wording to the line as it circulates today — but note that it is not identical to it. The familiar form (“I understand it brings you luck, whether you believe in it or not”) matches no transcribed source exactly; it is a smoothed, composite version of wordings that differ in every telling. The earliest printing of all is the Swedish item of 4 January 1956, whose sense runs closer to “a horseshoe can bring good luck even to people who are not superstitious.”

Quote Investigator: the full 1956–1986 chronology

How the story travelled

  • The earliest match located by Quote Investigator ↗ is an item in Stockholm’s Svenska Dagbladet of 4 January 1956, verified from scans, in which a curious American visitor asks Niels Bohr about the horseshoe above his door.
  • Through 1956 and 1957 the story spread in English — a syndicated humour column in The American Weekly, Maxwell Droke’s The Speaker’s Handbook of Humor, and the newspaper column “Office Cat” — and, as QI’s chronology ↗ shows, every one of them named Bohr.
  • Later tellings destabilise the attribution rather than confirm it: Wikiquote ↗ places the line under Disputed and records versions in which Bohr is the questioner, or is merely repeating a story about a neighbour in Tisvilde.
  • Albert Einstein enters only in 1986, in a Washington Post column that moves the horseshoe to Princeton and flags the tale as possibly apocryphal — the ninth and last citation in QI’s sequence ↗.

No rights status can be asserted for this wording, because no work of established authorship contains it. Every documented telling is from 1956 or later — well past the 1931 line that would make a work public domain in the United States — and each of those printings (a Swedish newspaper item, a syndicated humour column, a 1956 Harper & Brothers anthology) carries its own separate rights in its own particular phrasing. The popular form quoted here matches none of them exactly and has no identifiable author, so quotle.info makes no public-domain claim for it.

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

Who gets the credit, and why it keeps moving

This is a travelling anecdote, not a quotation with a home. It has been pinned on at least three physicists and one psychiatrist’s unnamed host, and the paper trail lets you watch it move.

Albert Einstein Unsupported

Einstein appears in no documented telling until Quote Investigator’s ↗ ninth citation: Joseph Laitin’s column in The Washington Post of 26 June 1986, which relocates the horseshoe to a Princeton front door. Laitin himself introduced it as a story “perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not.” The anecdote does not appear anywhere on Einstein’s Wikiquote page ↗ — not even among the misattributions.

Niels Bohr Documented but unverified

Bohr is named in the 4 January 1956 Svenska Dagbladet item and in every English printing that follows through the 1950s and 1970s. But QI ↗ located no direct evidence in Bohr’s own writings, and Wikiquote ↗ lists the line under Disputed. This is the best-supported name on the story, not a sourced quotation from it.

An unnamed physicist Anonymous

Carl Alfred Meier’s 1959 lecture version has him visiting an unidentified “world-famous scientist”; the 1973 anthology A Random Walk in Science gives an unnamed physicist with a horseshoe on a laboratory door, and routes the tale from I. B. Cohen to Samuel Goudsmit to Bohr — making Bohr the audience, not the speaker. Both are catalogued by Quote Investigator ↗.

Samuel Goudsmit Speculative

Wikiquote ↗ appends the note “Possibly originated by Samuel Goudsmit” to the entry. That is a suggestion rather than a finding, and no source cited here documents Goudsmit as the author of the line.

The honest answer: the horseshoe story belongs to Niels Bohr, not Albert Einstein — but it belongs to him as folklore. Its earliest printing is dated 4 January 1956, its Einstein version does not appear for another thirty years, and Quote Investigator ↗ closes with the observation that the origin and veracity of the narrative still await clarifying evidence.

Context

Why the horseshoe migrated to Einstein

The joke needs a very specific kind of person to land: someone whose scientific authority is so complete that a folk charm over his door reads as a scandal. For thirty years that person was Niels Bohr — the man who told the world atoms obey rules nobody’s intuition would have guessed. When the story surfaced again in a 1986 Washington Post column, the doorway had moved to Princeton and the physicist had become Einstein, who by then had inherited the role of the world’s default genius.

That is the whole mechanism behind a great many Einstein quotations. The line does not need to sound like him; it needs to need somebody like him, and he is the nearest name at hand. Here the drift is unusually easy to see, because the Bohr paper trail is dense, dated and continuous, and the Einstein version arrives from nowhere three decades in.

Einstein does not appear anywhere in this story for thirty years.

The wrinkle: even the Bohr version keeps sliding off Bohr

The tellings do not agree on who owned the horseshoe. In the 1959 lectures of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Alfred Meier the physicist is simply an unnamed “world-famous scientist”; in the 1973 anthology A Random Walk in Science the horseshoe hangs on a laboratory door and Bohr is explicitly not a participant — the note there routes the tale from the Harvard historian I. B. Cohen to Samuel Goudsmit, who told it to Bohr, “whose favourite story it became.” A 1974 telling puts the horseshoe on Bohr’s country cabin. All of this is set out on Quote Investigator ↗.

Wikiquote ↗ files the remark under its Disputed heading for the same reason, and notes the same instability: it cites Abraham Pais’s Inward Bound for the version in which Bohr answers a visitor at his home in Tisvilde, Samuel Sambursky’s 1974 book for an early version in which Bohr is the one asking and a friend gives the reply, and Heisenberg’s memoir Physics and Beyond for a version in which Bohr is merely repeating a story about a Tisvilde neighbour. Wikiquote adds that the line was “possibly originated by Samuel Goudsmit.”

Quote Investigator also flags a further 1956 sighting in the trade journal Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, crediting the Danish publication “Danmarksposten” — which would suggest the story was already circulating in Denmark. QI states plainly that this entry has not been verified on paper and may be inaccurate, so it is offered here with the same caveat.

Explore

Filed under

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

Doubt Humility Wisdom

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.

Quote Investigator: the full 1956–1986 chronologyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Traces the anecdote from Svenska Dagbladet (4 January 1956) through eight dated citations to the 1986 Washington Post version featuring Einstein, and concludes the earliest instances all named Bohr while no direct evidence appears in Bohr's writings.
Wikiquote: Niels Bohren.wikiquote.org

Carries the horseshoe reply under its Disputed heading, with the competing versions from Abraham Pais, Samuel Sambursky and Heisenberg, plus the note that the line was possibly originated by Samuel Goudsmit.
Wikiquote: Albert Einsteinen.wikiquote.org

Worth checking for what is absent: Einstein's Wikiquote page does not contain the horseshoe anecdote anywhere — not in the sourced quotes, not under Disputed, not under Misattributed.
Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond (Internet Archive)archive.org

Scan of Heisenberg's memoir, the Harper & Row translation of Der Teil und das Ganze — the book Wikiquote cites for the version in which Bohr is retelling the story about a neighbour in Tisvilde rather than answering for his own door.
Wikipedia: Niels Bohren.wikipedia.org

Biography of the physicist the anecdote is told about: born Copenhagen 7 October 1885, died there 18 November 1962, Nobel Prize in Physics 1922 for his work on atomic structure.
Wikipedia: Albert Einsteinen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the man the quote is popularly pinned on: 14 March 1879 to 18 April 1955, at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1933 and died in Princeton — the setting the 1986 retelling uses.

The physicist in the story

Who the anecdote is actually told about

Niels Bohr

1885–1962 · Danish theoretical physicist · Nobel Prize in Physics, 1922

Niels Bohr (born Copenhagen, 7 October 1885; died there 18 November 1962) was the Danish theoretical physicist who gave quantum theory its first working picture of the atom, and who spent the rest of his life arguing about what that picture meant — most famously with Einstein. He took the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on atomic structure and the radiation atoms emit. He also attracted stories: colleagues and biographers recorded a steady stream of Bohr sayings, and this is one of several that circulate widely without ever surfacing in anything he actually wrote.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available citation

Earliest documented telling: “Det påstås,” Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm), 4 January 1956, quote page 8, column 6 — naming Niels Bohr. Earliest English printing verified on paper: E. E. Kenyon, “The Wit Parade,” The American Weekly, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 30 September 1956, quote page 13, column 1. The attribution to Albert Einstein is not documented until Joseph Laitin, “A Rare Media Leak,” The Washington Post, 26 June 1986, page A24. Chronology per Quote Investigator ↗; no primary source in either man’s own writings has been located.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I Understand It Brings You Luck, Whether You Believe in It or Not’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-understand-it-brings-you-luck-whether-you-believe-in-it/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied