You must be pretty smart yourself– to make it this far.
The Misattributed Quote: “The Measure of Intelligence Is the Ability to Change”
One of the most popular modern inspirational quotes—“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change”—is routinely credited to Albert Einstein. A very similar version, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change,” is just as often pinned on Stephen Hawking. Both attributions are false.
Einstein never wrote or said the exact line in any of his published works, letters, or speeches. Reliable quote databases such as Wikiquote have examined the claim and found no evidence predating 2013. Hawking’s variant is equally unverified; it does not appear in his books, lectures, or interviews.
First Known Appearance
The precise wording “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change” first surfaced in print (and therefore on the internet via digital previews and sales) in 2013. It appears on page 123 of Learning PHP Design Patterns by William Sanders, an O’Reilly Media programming book. In Chapter 7, “The Adapter Pattern,” the author opens with two epigraphs:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” — Albert Einstein
The chapter is literally about software that “adapts,” so the quotes were chosen for thematic fit. Sanders did not originate the line himself or present it as his own idea—he explicitly attributed it to Einstein, apparently believing (like many others) that it was genuine. No earlier books, articles, or web archives contain this exact phrasing. Within a few years it spread rapidly across social media, quote sites, and motivational posts, cementing the Einstein misattribution.
A Much Older Idea
While the polished, quotable version is modern, the underlying concept—that intelligence is closely tied to adaptability—has been a cornerstone of psychology for more than a century.
- William Stern (1912), the German psychologist who actually coined the term “intelligence quotient” (IQ), defined intelligence as “a general mental adaptability to new problems and conditions of life.”
- Alfred Binet (early 1900s), creator of the first practical intelligence test, viewed intelligence as the ability to adapt and learn in novel situations.
- Lewis Terman (1916), who popularized the Stanford-Binet IQ test in the United States, described intelligence in similar terms: the capacity to adjust oneself to a new situation.
Later thinkers such as Jean Piaget and Robert Sternberg built entire theories around adaptation as a core feature of intelligence. In short, the idea that smart people (and smart species) are those who can change has been standard in psychology since the birth of modern intelligence testing in the first decade of the 20th century—well over 110 years ago.
So the next time you see the quote floating around with Einstein’s or Hawking’s name attached, remember: it’s a 21st-century motivational remix of a very old psychological truth. The real measure of intelligence may indeed be the ability to change—but the real measure of a good quote is knowing where it actually came from.
And now— You-Know-The-Truth.