evidence: This article is about the famous quote that is claimed to have been said by Albert Einstein about the definition of insanity. Before we get into the breakdown, we’ll go ahead and let you know that Albert Einstein did not in fact make this quote (nor is it the definition of insansity). We’ll work through it below. [...] This is pretty interesting because no one seems to claim that Einstein in fact said it any particular moment to any particular person. Leaving room for reasons why people claim it was Einstein who said it. As we’ll get to, a local newspaper accidentally slipped the quote into the wrong version of the story. [...] One of the reasons for adding to the literature on this particular quote was to actually say what the definition of mental insanity is. Relying on the dictionary, one might receive the definiton "the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness" which is decidedly unhelpful. The definition of insanity, in the real world, takes a number of different faces that make sense why a fake quote with significant intellectual backing and public acceptance would take hold in society. The researcher Fingarette, suggested that the definiton of insanity (in a criminal context) need be a question of whether one is competent for their actions.