evidence: A favorite of politicians (and pretty much everybody else), this quote has been wrongly attributed to Benjamin Franklin as well as—but there’s no evidence either of them said it. "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein," an authoritative complication of his most memorable utterances, identified the quote as a misattribution, and mentioned its use in the 1983 novel "Sudden Death" by Rita Mae Brown. On his website, Quote Investigator, O’Toole traced, the link between insanity and repetition back to at least the 19th century, but noted its use in a Narcotics Anonymous pamphlet as well as novels (including Brown’s), TV shows and various other sources. No substantive evidence exists suggesting Einstein made this statement, though it (as O’Toole wrote on his website) has been attributed to him in at least one self-help book. In fact, the quote can be traced to a well-established allegory involving animals doing impossible things, used to illustrate the fallacy of judging someone by a skill or ability that person (or animal) does not possess. [...] In "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein," editor Alice Calaprice clarified that Einstein agreed with this statement, but did not actually say it. In fact, he was quoting a passage by an anonymous "wit" in a chapter he wrote on education, included in his book "Out of My Later Years."