Albert Einstein and Compound Interest

Factual Questions
1

Back in high school, I remember reading this quote from Einstein: “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” It stuck in the back of my mind for a while, and almost inspired me to put money in the bank, but then I spent it on magic beans or somesuch. But yesterday, as I was reading Robert Wright’s excellent book “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny”, I started thinking about it again. Wright never mentions the quote himself, but his thesis hinges on this essential idea - that the kernel of evolution is not, pace Gould, a random genetic walk that happened to cause the highly unlikely existence of a being as complex and intelligent as man, but an inherent positive feedback loop that makes ever-increasing complexity, if not inexorable, quite likely. I find his thesis intriguing and at least tentatively convincing, not least because it seems to directly tie in what the Smartest Man of The Century once said.

The problem is, I can’t find any actual, non-apocryphal account of this quote. It doesn’t appear in any of the compendiums at Bartleby.com, and upon doing a google search on these words, I’ve all sorts of different supposed quotes on this subject from Einstein, mostly from investment sites: it’s the “ninth wonder of the world,” “the greatest mathematical discovery,” “the greatest invention of the 20th century,” etc. My question is simple: What did Einstein really say, and when did he say it?

2

probably never said it. to paraphrase an old saw “47% of all statistics are made up on the spot. the same goes for 99% of Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein quotes.”

3

Evolution also caused the highly unlikely existence of cockroaches, bacteria, wallabies, Canada geese, and king salmon. These creatures are as much its “end point” as human beings.

As for the quote, I remember something similar being attributed to Ben Franklin. Einstein doesn’t strike me as a guy who spent a lot of time thinking about investments.

4

A lot of people, including the Motley Fool seem to think he said it, but don’t know when. I tried to look it up in my copy of Calaprice’s The Quotable Einstein–she includes attributions whenever she can–but I couldn’t find it. On the other hand, I see that there is a newer, much larger, edition out.

5

If indeed Einstein said it, he was not the first: the wonderful power of compound interest was an oft-repeated truism among mathmatics teachers, economists, and the thrifty long before Einstein was born.