Plumber Quotes (4)
Misquotation] If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. [Apparently remorseful for his role in the development of the atom bomb.]
"Although often seen cited as ""Attributed. New Statesman (16 Apr 1965""), Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (2006), 53, states 'Einstein said no such thing."" See the similar quote about a plumber.
Anybody who has any doubt about the ingenuity or the resourcefulness of a plumber never got a bill from one.
On CBS television (8 Jan 1954). As quoted in Julia Vitullo-Martin and J. Robert Moskin, The Executive's Book of Quotations (2002), 146.
If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.
According to Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (2006), 53, on other occasions Einstein said 'he might rather have been a musician, or light-house keeper'; however it is a 'popular misquotation' that refers to being a watchmaker.
See also: | Biography (159) | Career (15) | Independence (4) | Scholar (9) | Scientist (78) | Teacher (26) | Youth (13)
The practice of medicine is a thinker's art, the practice of surgery a plumber's.
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
