Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

The aphorism is widely circulated in discussions of measurement, management, and social science, often invoked as a caution against reducing complex human values to simple metrics. Despite frequent modern attributions to figures like Albert Einstein, the earliest solid attribution is to the Canadian-born writer and journalist William Bruce Cameron, who used it in mid‑20th‑century commentary about the limits of quantification in evaluating what matters. It gained broader currency later as “metrics” culture expanded in business and public policy, where it is commonly quoted to remind audiences that numerical indicators can miss or distort qualitative realities.

The aphorism cautions against confusing measurability with importance. It points out that many things that are easy to quantify—totals, rankings, outputs—may be trivial or misleading, while many of the most consequential aspects of life and society—meaning, trust, beauty, ethical integrity, love, wisdom—resist precise measurement. In modern settings it is often invoked as a critique of technocratic or managerial thinking that treats metrics as reality rather than as imperfect proxies. The quote thus encourages humility about numbers and a broader evaluative lens that includes qualitative judgment and human values.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.