Relativity Theory Quotes

Einstein’s relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.

Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes; when you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours. That's relativity.

E=mc2. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared

Scientists, therefore, are responsible for their research, not only intellectually but also morally. This responsibility has become an important issue in many of today's sciences, but especially so in physics, in which the results of quantum mechanics and relativity theory have opened up two very different paths for physicists to pursue. They may lead us - to put it in extreme terms -- to the Buddha or to the Bomb, and it is up to each of us to decide which path to take.

I am not enough of a mathematician to be able to judge either the well-foundedness or the limits of relativity in physics.

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.

Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.

Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.

When I was doing Professor Albert Einstein's bust he had many a jibe at the Nazi professors, one hundred of whom had condemned his theory of relativity in a book. 'Were I wrong,' he said, 'one professor would have been enough.

I'm a huge advocate of all sciences. And my favorite - actually, not my favorite because I love all sciences - but my primary science that I study all the time is physics. It's the mother of all sciences because it's just how things move and how things react to the world around them. I feel like I would definitely go to college for physics.

Relativity challenges your basic intuitions that you've built up from everyday experience. It says your experience of time is not what you think it is, that time is malleable. Your experience of space is not what you think it is; it can stretch and shrink.

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.

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 we're dealing with are black holes as described by general relativity.

Formerly, people thought that if matter disappeared from the universe, space and time would remain. Relativity declares that space and time would disappear with matter.

It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing...

Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!

We are all time travelers moving at the speed of exactly 60 minutes per hour.

Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?

E=mc2. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. The original statement is: If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c2. Ist die Tragheit eines Korpers von Seinem Energieghalt Abhangig? 1905

Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.

Either CS (coordinate system) could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: the sun is at rest and the earth moves, or the sun moves and the earth is at rest, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS

So much of what we said sounded crazy, yet none of it was false... as if two theoretical physicists stood on stage to say that when we travel near lightspeed, we get younger than nontravellers; that a mile of space next to the sun is differnt than a mile of space next to the earth because the sun-mile space is curved more than the the earth-mile. Silly ideas, worth the admission price in smiles, but they're true. Is high-energy physics interesting because it's true or because it's crazy?

Physics is the most fundamental, and least significant, of the sciences.