Relativity Quotes - Page 9

• In my personal experience I have hardly come to know the wretchedness of mankind better than as a result of the general theory of relativity and everything connected to it. But it doesn't bother me.

  Albert Einstein

  Theory, Results, Mankind

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.361, Princeton University Press

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• No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail.

  Brian Greene

  Cat, Trying, Matter

  NOVA interview, www.pbs.org. October 28, 2003.

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• The ancient intuition that all matter, all "reality," is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of he pervasive energy that animates the electron.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Reality, Ideas, Space

  Peter Matthiessen (1998). “Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982”, p.69, Shambhala Publications

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• Einstein, my upset stomach hates your theory [of General Relativity]—it almost hates you yourself! How am I to' provide for my students? What am I to answer to the philosophers?!!

  Paul Ehrenfest

  Hate, Upset Stomach, Answers

  Letter to Albert Einstein, November 24, 1919.

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• 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

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• My opinion about Miller's experiments is the following. ... Should the positive result be confirmed, then the special theory of relativity and with it the general theory of relativity, in its current form, would be invalid. Experimentum summus judex. Only the equivalence of inertia and gravitation would remain, however, they would have to lead to a significantly different theory.

  Albert Einstein

  Special, Different, Would Be

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• Einstein didn't speak until he was four, leading most of his teachers to believe he was crazy. That is until he whipped out the theory of relativity. BAYUM! Showed you guys.

  Albert Einstein

  Teacher, Crazy, Believe

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• 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

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• I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.

  Max Born

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

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• By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be represented as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Men, Germany

  "Einstein On His Theory". The Times (London), November 28, 1919.

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• 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

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• 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.

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• Relativity. Gravity. Quantum. Electrodynamics. Evolution. Each of these theories is true, whether or not you believe in them.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Believe, Religion, Atheism

  Twitter post from Nov 10, 2014

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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.

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• 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

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

  Antony Garrett Lisi

  Gravity, Found, Theory

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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)

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