Montage
Chapter & Verse
Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words
W.H. Levit hopes someone can provide an exact citation for a statement generally attributed to Voltaire: “I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.”
“something wrong with the experiment” (May-June). Mark Davis noted the similarity of Professor William Doering’s comment to “a famous quote attributed to Einstein, though no one seems to be able to confirm it: ‘If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.’ If Einstein did say it, some say he was joking, while others argue he was emphasizing that there can be bad experimental data and that good theories should not necessarily be discarded because of contradictory results from a single experiment.”
Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to [email protected].
