On the back cover of either Penguin Classic's "Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms" or Dover Philosophical Classics "Schopenhauer: On the Basis of Morality" (I can't remember which), it states that Albert Einstein was inspired by Schopenhauer. I also remember seeing that stated on the internet a few times.

 

Seeing as how Einstein is perhaps the most misquoted person of all time, I was wondering if anyone knew of any actual basis for this? Usually the best way is to just search the body of all letters, interviews, and writings of Albert Einstein for the specific term in question; does anyone know where to find a compilation of all things actually said by Einstein?

Here is one reference: http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/credo.html

(Just the first thing that turned up.)

 

Some of these might help:

http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/

http://www.einstein.caltech.edu/

http://www.alberteinstein.info/

 

An overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_Papers_Project

Maybe Einstein was inspired by Schopenhauer, but I would say, not greatly inspired, especially if you look at his professional career. There he refers to Kant, Hume, Mach and Poincaré.

 

But Schopenhauer's main work was in those days a 'salon book'. Every (would-be) intellectual had 'The World as Will and Representation' on his bookshelves: Nietzsche was influenced by it, Freud, and even Wittgenstein. So a big chance that Einstein also read it. But in the links provided by Strange here above, I only see him referring to Schopenhauer's idea of free will: that we might be able to do what we want, but are not able to want what we want'. Einstein therefore concluded that we have no free will. Possibly he aesthetically liked it, as it fits to the idea of the spacetime-continuum: that everything in some sense is already there.