Albert Einstein wrote it in a letter to his biographer Carl Seelig dated 11 March 1952. The German reads: “Ich habe keine besondere Begabung, sondern bin nur leidenschaftlich neugierig.” He was answering a question about whether his gifts were inherited.
What it means
Einstein plays down the idea of innate genius and credits his achievements to an intense, persistent curiosity. It is a modest claim, but also a real view of how discovery works: the drive to keep asking matters more than a special gift.
Where it comes from
Seelig was gathering material for a biography, and Einstein’s letter opens by thanking him for his letter of 6 March. The next line is the famous one, followed at once by “Damit entfällt also die Frage nach der Erbschaft” — roughly, “so the question of inheritance falls away.” That suggests Seelig had asked whether Einstein’s gifts were inherited; Einstein’s answer is that there was no special talent to inherit.
The typed letter is held at ETH Zurich, and the Albert Einstein Archives catalogue it as 39-013. Alice Calaprice’s The Expanded Quotable Einstein gives the English as “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious,” and notes a similar sentiment in a letter to Hans Muehsam of 4 March 1953 (Einstein Archive 38-424). The German Begabung is singular, so “talent” is the closer translation.