"One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility"
About this Quote
Einstein’s intent isn’t mystical hand-waving so much as calibrated awe. Coming from the architect of relativity, it’s a reminder that even the most hard-nosed physics rests on an unprovable gift: the fit between human reason and the world’s structure. The subtext is anti-triumphalist. Scientific progress can breed the illusion that reality is basically an open book and we’re just speed-reading it. Einstein insists the opposite: every successful equation should make you more suspicious, not less, about why that success is possible.
Context matters. In the early 20th century, physics was both conquering and destabilizing: classical certainty collapsing under quantum strangeness, space and time losing their commonsense solidity. Einstein himself was famously uneasy with quantum randomness, yet he stayed devoted to the idea that the universe has an underlying order. This sentence threads that needle. It concedes mystery without surrendering to it, casting “comprehensibility” as the strangest feature of all.
It works rhetorically because it reframes wonder as epistemology: the miracle isn’t a comet or a black hole, it’s that the mind has any leverage over them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Einstein, Albert. (2026, January 15). One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-may-say-the-eternal-mystery-of-the-world-is-25312/
Chicago Style
Einstein, Albert. "One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-may-say-the-eternal-mystery-of-the-world-is-25312/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-may-say-the-eternal-mystery-of-the-world-is-25312/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










