I think it’s likely that both quotes were unrepresentative passages or insignificant slips of tongue that only got magnified and entrenched in people’s minds after years of memetic selection. It’s obvious that Einstein couldn’t have meant the grandmother quote seriously, also, Einstein is known to be very prone to rampant misquotation. The grandmother quote is quite comforting to the layman, even if untrue, and sounds “deep” enough, likewise the Feynman quote raises the status of confused non-physicists and physicists alike, because “not even the pros get it, and it’s allowed to not get it.”
I think it’s likely that both quotes were unrepresentative passages or insignificant slips of tongue that only got magnified and entrenched in people’s minds after years of memetic selection. It’s obvious that Einstein couldn’t have meant the grandmother quote seriously, also, Einstein is known to be very prone to rampant misquotation. The grandmother quote is quite comforting to the layman, even if untrue, and sounds “deep” enough, likewise the Feynman quote raises the status of confused non-physicists and physicists alike, because “not even the pros get it, and it’s allowed to not get it.”