Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

Quote Investigator distinguishes a long family of chance-and-divinity sayings from this particular wording. It locates a coincidence-and-anonymous-miracle precursor in Lucille Prince’s report of an Alcoholics Anonymous speech, Florence Times Tri-Cities Daily, 27 March 1976, p. 12. For the exact singular wording, it cites Charlotte Clemensen Taylor in an Associated Press story printed in The Salina Journal, 10 January 1986, p. N5. This identifies a documented user, not necessarily the coiner. A plural form was credited to Doris Lessing in Small Miracles (1997); the Einstein credit appears in Noah benShea’s What Every Principal Would Like to Say . . . and What to Say Next Time (2000), p. 94. These publication details are secondary evidence from Quote Investigator, not independently inspected originals. The Wikiquote Talk discussion independently points to the 2000 book and earlier non-Einstein occurrences. This run checked those sources and the atlas; it did not search a full Einstein corpus, which the atlas does not hold. The coiner and the first-ever Einstein attribution remain unestablished.

1. 27 March 1976Before it · credited to Dr. Paul F.Lucille Prince reports an AA speaker identified as Dr. Paul F. explaining coincidence as a miracle in which God stays anonymous; this is a related formulation rather than the later exact wording.Lucille Prince, Faith Is Balance For Life, Florence Times Tri-Cities Daily, 27 March 1976, p. 12, column 3. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. 10 January 1986Earliest found · credited to Charlotte Clemensen TaylorAn Associated Press story quotes Charlotte Clemensen Taylor using the exact singular wording; this is the earliest exact occurrence located by the cited investigation, not proof of coinage.Associated Press, Former chaplain working to found first new order of monks in 700 years, The Salina Journal, 10 January 1986, p. N5; story starts p. N4. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
3. 1997Credited to Doris LessingThe introduction to Small Miracles credits the plural form to Doris Lessing, without establishing her authorship.Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal, Small Miracles: Extraordinary Coincidences from Everyday Life (Adams Media Corporation, 1997), p. xi. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
4. 2000Credited to Albert EinsteinNoah benShea’s quotation collection credits the singular form to Einstein; this is the Einstein credit identified in the cited investigation.Noah benShea, What Every Principal Would Like to Say . . . and What to Say Next Time: Quotations for Leading, Learning, and Living (Corwin Press, 2000), p. 94. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

The saying interprets chance events as unacknowledged divine intervention. Its documentary history passes through religious and inspirational writing before the Einstein credit found by Quote Investigator.

What looks like chance may, for the speaker, be God acting without announcing himself.

It is often used as evidence of Einstein’s religious beliefs. The attribution is not authenticated, and this sentence cannot establish what he believed.

God, Faith, Religion

• Creativity is intelligence having fun. (not found)
• Gray is the color of truth. (misattributed) André Gide
• All addictions are a low-level search for God. (paraphrase) Carl Gustav Jung
• The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God! (misattributed) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. (not found)

• quoteinvestigator.com/2015/04/20/coincidence
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Albert_Einstein

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Attributed to Albert Einstein. No. There is no authenticated Einstein source. The exact wording was reported from Charlotte Clemensen Taylor in 1986; an Einstein credit is documented in a 2000 quotation collection. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/coincidence-is-gods-way-of-remaining-anonymous/ (checked 25 October 2026).

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