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Who really said it

If A is success in life, then A equals X plus Y plus Z. Work is X, play is Y and Z is keeping your mouth shut

Written by Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · theoretical physicist
Verified Free to reuse

Einstein said it to the journalist and portraitist S. J. Woolf, in an interview published in The New York Times Magazine on 18 August 1929. It came as an exchange rather than a single sentence: Einstein gave the formula with X as work and Y as play, and only when Woolf asked what Z stood for did he answer — “That is keeping your mouth shut.”

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

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“If A is success in life, then A equals X plus Y plus Z. Work is X, play is Y and Z is keeping your mouth shut” If A is success in life, I should say the formula is A = X + Y + Z, X being work and Y being play. […] That is keeping your mouth shut. —Albert Einstein, interviewed by S. J. Woolf, The New York Times Magazine, 18 August 1929

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Interview
S. J. Woolf with Albert Einstein
Published
The New York Times Magazine, 18 August 1929, p. SM2
Spoken
Berlin, summer 1929
Author
Albert Einstein, 1879–1955

If A is success in life, I should say the formula is A = X + Y + Z, X being work and Y being play. […] That is keeping your mouth shut. NYT Magazine, 18 Aug 1929

The exchange as printed. The familiar single-sentence version is a later smoothing of a question-and-answer — faithful in substance, but not how he said it.

Quote Investigator — the 1929 interview traced to the page

How we traced it

  • The line is documented to S. J. Woolf’s interview in The New York Times Magazine of 18 August 1929, p. SM2, with the verbatim exchange preserved — formula first, then the answer about Z Quote Investigator ↗.
  • Wikiquote carries it among Einstein’s sourced statements, citing Calaprice and Dyson’s The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 230, noted as said to Samuel J. Woolf in Berlin, summer 1929 sourced quotations ↗.
  • Reference works independently record the same 1929 New York Times Magazine attribution, which is what separates this line from the large body of Einstein quotations that trace to nothing at all Oxford Reference ↗.
Public domain

Free to reuse, including commercially. The interview was published in the United States in 1929, and all US works published before 1931 are in the public domain. Einstein’s own words are likewise out of copyright in the EU and UK (he died in 1955; the term expired on 1 January 2026). You can quote the exchange in full, on a slide, in a book, or on a product — just credit it accurately, and prefer the exchange form over the smoothed one.

Fact-check

Correctly credited — watch the form

Rare among famous Einstein quotations, this one is genuinely his and pinnable to a page. The only drift is in shape: a spoken exchange has been ironed into a single sentence.

Woolf’s question is missing reformatted

Einstein gave the formula and defined X and Y; Z was only explained after Woolf asked what it stood for. The popular one-sentence version deletes the question and, with it, the comic timing verbatim exchange ↗.

‘then A equals X plus Y plus Z’ regularized

Einstein said ‘I should say the formula is A = X + Y + Z.’ The tidier modern phrasing is a later regularization — harmless in substance, but it is not what appeared in 1929.

Genuinely Einstein, to S. J. Woolf for The New York Times Magazine, 18 August 1929 — and public domain, so free to reuse citation ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is a physicist’s joke about self-promotion: he sets up an equation, defines the obvious terms, and withholds the third until asked — at which point the punchline is that the secret ingredient is silence.

Coming in 1929, at the height of a fame he found intrusive, ‘keeping your mouth shut’ reads less as advice than as something he wished he had managed himself.

That is keeping your mouth shut.

How it was actually spoken

Einstein: ‘If A is success in life, I should say the formula is A = X + Y + Z, X being work and Y being play.’

Woolf: asks what Z stands for.

Einstein: ‘That is keeping your mouth shut.’

Modern smoothed form: ‘If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.’

Explore

Filed under

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

Success Work

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.

If A Is Success in Life, Then A Equals X Plus Y Plus Zquoteinvestigator.com

The 1929 New York Times Magazine citation with page number and the verbatim question-and-answer.
Albert Einstein — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Lists it among his documented statements, citing Calaprice & Dyson, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, p. 230.
Oxford Reference — Einstein quotationswww.oxfordreference.com

Independent reference-work corroboration of the 1929 attribution.

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 1929 he was the most famous scientist alive and gave a steady stream of interviews to the international press — which is why so many of his genuinely sourced lines, this one included, come from journalists’ copy rather than from his scientific papers. He was fifty that summer, and plainly enjoying the joke.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Woolf, S. J. Interview with Albert Einstein. The New York Times Magazine, 18 August 1929, p. SM2.

MLA (9th ed.)

Woolf, S. J. Interview with Albert Einstein. The New York Times Magazine, 18 Aug. 1929, p. SM2.

APA (7th ed.)

Woolf, S. J. (1929, August 18). Interview with Albert Einstein. The New York Times Magazine, p. SM2.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If A is success in life, then A equals X plus Y plus Z’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-a-is-success-in-life-then-a-equals-x-plus-y-plus-z-work

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