Relativity Quotes - Page 7

• The total number of people who understand relativistic time, even after eighty years since the advent of special relativity, is still much smaller than the number of people who believe in horoscopes.

  Yuval Ne'eman

  Believe, Science, Years

  8 Copy quote

• The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and a student of gravitational relativity on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday, he is praying... that someone will find the reconciliation between the two views.

  Norbert Wiener

  Friday, Monday, Sunday

  7 Copy quote

• Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Religious, Believe, Thinking

  "Physics and Beyond". Book by Wolfgang Pauli, 1971.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.

  Paul Dirac

  Art, People, Appreciate

  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.908, Cambridge University Press

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there…the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

  Joe Haldeman

  Buddhism, Reality, Way

  Joe Haldeman (2014). “The Forever War”, p.38, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Evidence in support of general relativity came quickly. Astronomers had long known that Mercury’s orbital motion around the sun deviated slightly from what Newton’s mathematics predicted. In 1915, Einstein used his new equations to recalculate Mercury’s trajectory and was able to explain the discrepancy, a realization he later described to his colleague Adrian Fokker as so thrilling that for some hours it gave him heart palpitations.

  Brian Greene

  Heart, Long, Support

  Brian Greene (2011). “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos”, p.16, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tell me it's never been done. Because the only real laws in this world-the only things we really know-are the two postulates of relativity, the three laws of Newton, the four laws of thermodynamics, and Maxwell's equation-no, scratch that, the only things we really know are Maxwell's equations, the three laws of Newton, the two postulates of relativity, and the periodic table. That's all we know that's true. All the rest are man's laws

  Dean Kamen

  Real, Men, Law

  22 Copy quote

• The 4D style, or cosmic comics and relativistic humor, is based on Einstein's theory of relativity which I came up with 20 years ago. 4D works use the idea of the fourth dimension, time, playing on such surrealistic and amazing subjects as motion relativity, space curvature and time dilation.

  Javad Alizadeh

  Years, Ideas, Space

  "Cartoonist Alizadeh, Translating World Into Humor". Press TV, April 23, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no Jesus without Judas, no Martin Luther King, Jr., without the Klan; no Ali without Joe Frazier; no freedom without tyranny. No wisdom exists that does not include perspective. Relativity is the greatest gift.

  Chris Crutcher

  Jesus, Kings, Perspective

  4 Copy quote

• There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time ... On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  The Character of Physical Law ch. 6 (1965)

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no dualism in the world of light. The conventions of relativity say that time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, but if one tries to imagine the point of view of a thing made of light, one must realize that what is never mentioned is that if one moves at the speed of light there is no time whatsoever... One exists in eternity, one has become eternal... One is then apart from the moving image; one exists in the completion of eternity.

  Terence McKenna

  Moving, Light, Views

  "New Maps of Hyperspace". Terence McKenna's speech at the Berkeley Institute for the Study of Consciousness (1984) as quoted in "Magical Blend Magazine", Issue #22, April 1989.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gravitational waves will bring us exquisitely accurate maps of black holes - maps of their space-time. Those maps will make it crystal clear whether or not what were dealing with are black holes as described by general relativity.

  Kip Thorne

  Space, Black, Maps

  13 Copy quote

• I always found it satisfying that gravity was described by Einstein's geometric theory of general relativity.

  Antony Garrett Lisi

  Gravity, Found, Theory

  4 Copy quote

• It is ironic that Einsteins most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed[..].

  Robert B. Laughlin

  Space, Creative, Ironic

  Robert B. Laughlin (2008). “A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down”, p.99, Basic Books

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Einstein's general relativity the structure of space can change but not its topology. Topology is the property of something that doesn't change when you bend it or stretch it as long as you don't break anything.

  Edward Witten

  Change, Space, Long

  91 Copy quote

• On quantum theory I use up more brain grease (rough translation of German idiom) than on relativity.

  Albert Einstein

  Grease, Brain, Use

  Quoted by Otto Stern in an interview with Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Vocabulary, Blind Spots, People

  Wyndham Lewis (1926). “The Art of Being Ruled”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• White lines in movement symbolize a unifying idea which flows through the compartmented units of life bringing the consciousness of a larger relativity.

  Mark Tobey

  Ideas, White, Movement

  13 Copy quote

• General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures.

  Paul Davies

  Structure, Strings, Force

  " Einstein, the first spin doctor" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. April 9, 2004.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by general relativity since no information is being conveyed.

  David Mermin

  Light, Growth, Information

  18 Copy quote

• I think, you know, the thing everybody really wants to know anyway is not what the theory of relativity is, but I think what we all really want to know anyways, is whether we're loved or not.

  Rich Mullins

  Thinking, Want, Theory

  Concert in Wheaton, Illinois, www.kidbrothers.net. April 11, 1997.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The last I knew you were going to a party. just a few friends at the McEvoys' you told me. The science club, you told me. What happened? You got into a fight about the theory of relativity? Did creationists crash the party and start a rumble?

  Tami Hoag

  Party, Fighting, Clubs

  Tami Hoag (2013). “The 9th Girl”, p.35, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every great artist raises art to a science, and every great scientist raises science to an art, hence we have Michelangelo's David and Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

  Robert Breault

  Art, Greatness, Scientist

  8 Copy quote

• Now Einstein was a very clever man, with us all his philosophies he shared, He gave us the theory of relativity, which is E equals M C squared.

  Richard Digance

  Clever, Philosophy, Philosophical

  4 Copy quote

• The Theory of Relativity confers an absolute meaning on a magnitude which in classical theory has only a relative significance: the velocity of light. The velocity of light is to the Theory of Relativity as the elementary quantum of action is to the Quantum Theory: it is its absolute core.

  Max Planck

  Science, Light, Velocity

  Max Planck (2014). “Scientific Autobiography: and Other Papers”, p.25, Open Road Media

  11 Copy quote

  Show source