Albert Einstein — "Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do-but gravitati…"
Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do-but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Albert Einstein
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt …"
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
"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."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
Details
A humorous and slightly cynical remark on love, in a quote to Fred Wall.
Date: 1933
Love & RelationshipsVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Love is a human choice, not a cosmic accident—and while falling for someone might seem irrational, it's hardly the dumbest thing we do. Physical laws govern falling objects, not falling hearts; we own our emotional decisions. The joke turns on the word "falling": gravity pulls things downward, but whatever pulls people toward each other operates entirely beyond physics to explain, predict, or excuse.
Relevance to Albert Einstein
Einstein's personal life was famously turbulent—he divorced first wife Mileva Marić after years of emotional neglect and an affair, then married cousin Elsa Löwenthal. His self-deprecating wit was well-documented by colleagues. For the man who reformulated gravity as curved spacetime, invoking his own field to joke about love's irrationality was signature Einstein: using science as a wry lens on human absurdity while candidly admitting no equation captures the heart.
The era
Einstein published General Relativity in 1915, making gravity a dominant topic in public scientific imagination. Simultaneously, Freudian psychology was reshaping how society understood human drives and romantic attraction. Post-WWI disillusionment had eroded Victorian romantic idealism, and modernism brought skeptical, ironic sensibilities toward grand emotions. Einstein's quip bridged cutting-edge physics and human folly at the precise cultural moment when both science and psychology were radically competing to explain what invisible forces actually govern human behavior.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].