Quotessence
Home / Topics / Einstein Quotes

Einstein Quotes

Browse 91 quotes about Einstein.

Einstein Quotes

“I often wonder what Einstein would have done in my position. At Peterson, I kept an Einstein poster in my room, the one that says 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.' Einstein was smart, maybe even as smart as Laserator, but he played it way too safe. Then again, nobody ever threw a grappling hook at Einstein. I like to think he would have enjoyed my work, if he could have seen it. But no one sees anything I do, not until it's hovering over Chicago.”

“One day at Fenner's (the university cricket ground at Cambridge), just before the last war, G. H. Hardy and I were talking about Einstein. Hardy had met him several times, and I had recently returned from visiting him. Hardy was saying that in his lifetime there had only been two men in the world, in all the fields of human achievement, science, literature, politics, anything you like, who qualified for the Bradman class. For those not familiar with cricket, or with Hardy's personal idiom, I ought to mention that “the Bradman class” denoted the highest kind of excellence: it would include Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Newton, Archimedes, and maybe a dozen others. Well, said Hardy, there had only been two additions in his lifetime. One was Lenin and the other Einstein.”

“People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!”

“A Teoria da Relatividade Geral de Einstein, publicada em 1915, foi uma revolução na física, propondo que a gravidade é o resultado da curvatura do espaço-tempo causada pela presença de massa e energia. A validação desta teoria foi um processo dedutivo e empírico meticuloso. Inicialmente, Einstein deduziu as implicações da teoria a partir de princípios fundamentais, como o Princípio da Equivalência, que sugere a indistinguibilidade local entre a gravidade e aceleração. A primeira grande validação empírica ocorreu em 1919, quando um eclipse solar permitiu que Arthur Eddington medisse a curvatura da luz ao redor do sol, confirmando as previsões de Einstein. Nos anos subsequentes, a teoria foi submetida a testes cada vez mais rigorosos. Por exemplo, observações de pulsares em sistemas binários forneceram dados que confirmaram a precisão da teoria com uma consistência de 99,99%. Esses testes empíricos, realizados ao longo de décadas, solidificaram a Teoria da Relatividade Geral como um dos pilares fundamentais da física moderna. E a teoria da relatividade está aqui a somente 100 anos, o Deus cristão existe há mais de 2.000 anos, e não conseguiu uma única prova.”

“SPACE IN THE UNIVERSE EINSTEIN’S SPACE The space we explored and elaborated on before is not the same as we experience in the existing Universe, as we “see” it. In the “space,” before the Universe, as we know it, there is no point of reference. A point of reference exists only if there is a relationship between something and something else, even if that relationship is only between two things, two entities. We will call the space we experience Einstein’s space. Einstein’s space is “impregnated,” programmed, or shall we dare to say, “contaminated” by the awakening, “explosion” of the Absolute. This explosion is the dispersion of Nothingness into the Being, not the “explosion” of the Being into Nothingness. The “space” created this way is not the clean “space” we described as an absolute vacuum, emptiness, or nothingness. If we talk about the Primordial Being and Nonbeing, we cannot talk about space from Einstein’s physics point of view. In the primordial “space,” the Being does not possess any material properties; the same applies to the Nonbeing or nothingness. In such a state, there is no space as we understand it. Every point is the same point. Every moment is the same moment. In such a state, the vastness of “space” and “time” are the same point and moment. This is the infinity of the finite, compressed infinity of the Absolute Being. The Infinity and Eternity outside the realm of the “material” Universe are the Infinity of Eternity and Eternity of Infinity enslaved beyond space and time. That which gives space and “time” to the World is beyond the spacetime continuum. The Universe is the manifestation of the Absolute Being. Absolute Being is spaceless and timeless. It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It encapsulates all the space and time, yet it is outside space and time. Absolute is spaceless space and timeless time. Absolute is Everything and nothing at the same time.”

“Emptiness, an absolute vacuum, cannot be curved, yet only emptiness makes space. Only matter, our idea of matter, can be curved; its curving is not a condensation of energy but the dilution of the energy of compressed “knowledge,” “mind,” idea,” “thought,” or “spirit.” Only this condensed essence, “immaterial substance,” can be curved in its expansion or “extension.” Neither the “real space” (absolute vacuum) has an actual dimension, nor does the universal essence, the “ultimate substance,” have it. The “immaterial substance,” Universal Mind, is the only authentic energy of the Being, existing in its knowledge and “memory.”

“Space, in its essence, does not exist and, therefore, cannot be curved. What exists is only an emanation of the Supreme Being transformed into reality. We measure the expression of the Absolute and not the absolute itself. We already elaborated on the manifestation of the Absolute as we see it. Therefore, the curvature of space is a curvature of the convention, as presented to our senses, the curvature of the emanation and manifestation of the Absolute Mind in the World.”

“A journey itself is beauty: space, journey, is the hope and joy of the world. Nothingness is the most important “dimension” of the Absolute or God; he doesn’t have dimensions without emptiness. Without Nothing, he is Nothing. Without the Nothing, there is no world and ultimately no space; if there is no space, there is nothing to be curved. However, if there is something, that something can exist as the world, only with the Nothing or in the Nothing or the Nothing can exist within it. Nothingness cannot be curved; only the Being can have curvature. The curvature of the Being is only its “physical” appearance and not the actual curvature of space, which is nothing and cannot be curved. As manifested in the world, the Being is many and One simultaneously. It is divided into a multitude yet stays One. There is only one Universe containing plurality—micro shapes, micro-universes, particles, waves, whatever we call all the elements of existence.”

“What causes the illusion of the curvature of space is the limitation of language, thought, understanding, and the application of our limited language and beliefs to reality. We cannot change reality, but we can try to accommodate our thoughts and language in what appears to be a reality. Since the Nothing is “not” space, we are sure we can legitimately say that space can be curved. Nevertheless, we must first answer what space is. If we cannot precisely answer what space is, we cannot speculate that an absolute vacuum is not space. In other words, we cannot base our thoughts and language on consequences and conclusions rather than causes and premises.”

“The main question is if there can be any space without space, although this sounds absurd, for it is evident that there can be no space without space. However, if there can be no space without space, how can there be the curvature of space if there is no space? Then, we may answer that there is space and engage in circular reasoning. On a superficial level, some “obvious axioms” lead us to accept that there is space as it is without questioning how that is, how it is possible, and what creates this space. Then, we may answer that, based on laws of physics, nature works in such ways and that there are four main forces, and that based on all our knowledge and theories confirmed by experiments, we conclude and state, based on a “fact,” that there is a curvature of space.”

“We still can insist that space is what we say because nothing, or an absolute vacuum, is not space. Then, we must prove how space can exist without this nothing or absolute vacuum. But we cannot prove that space is possible without nothing. Since we cannot prove that there is space or curvature of space without nothing, we will establish the opposite: without the absolute vacuum, the Nothing (void, emptiness), there is no space. When we become convinced that there can be no space without the Nothing or an absolute vacuum, we must answer precisely what space is and how it becomes space. The only actual space is nothing or an absolute vacuum; we have already stated that this space cannot be curved.”

“We may still insist that space, although mainly emptiness, is completely “contaminated” by all the forces in the Universe—particles, waves, and so on. Still, based on this deduction or inference, we cannot prove that what is curved is space since nothing remains nothing and cannot be transformed into something based on the laws of physics. If the Nothing does not convert into something, the curvature of space is impossible. To prove the curvature of nothing (space), we must prove that nothing can transform itself into something based on the laws of physics. Suppose we further insist that this is only a problem of linguistics and philosophy and not physics since we stated that space is how we define it and not as it is. This reasoning would be insufficient because we must first prove that actual space is what it is and not what we say it is to fit our arguments. There can be no answers to the most critical questions of contemporary science, physics, philosophy, and even religions if we are not as precise as possible, linguistically, experimentally, or in any other way. These questions appear to be self-evident, self-explanatory truths and axioms, yet they are neither self-evident nor clear and precise to reflect the actual underlying reality. If we are not as precise as possible, we create theories and paradigms presented as facts, although the starting premises are undefined and unanswered. However, if we do not answer the starting causes and premises, we cannot adequately describe the laws of nature, nor can we understand them. Regardless of how sure we are about space and the curvature of space, we still cannot claim we are correct without describing the nature of nothing. Without the Nothing, there can be no space. There will be an immediate argument, though, that the Nothing has no nature and, therefore, there is nothing to describe. The answer is that its passivity and lack of properties are its most potent “property” because they enable creation and existence. Without the Nothing or void, there is no creation and no existence. We converted nothing into something by our thoughts and language, using deduction or inference, and concluded that space is the consequence of this thought process, not the actual process. We applied our definite language to our indefinite “understanding,” ideas, or reasoning to prove the “fact.” However, the fact is or is not, regardless of our ideas, language, or reasoning. We must use the opposite and apply language to the facts rather than our understanding. Our understanding is limited, and facts are impersonal and independent of our knowledge. We cannot falsify the language to fit and understand the facts better. We cannot change facts or affect them with our ideas, but facts are verifiable up to a point. There are facts beyond the verifiable point by humans since human beings are limited. Still, language is verifiable, and our theories are both falsifiable and verifiable to a large extent.”

“Since the immaterial Being envelopes the Nothing, this nothing, in “cooperation” with the Universal Being (Mind), becomes space as we experience and describe it. The “fabric” of this created space, with the help of nothingness, is curved. But all this is the product of the transformation of the Being into its different forms, modes, and interdependent qualities of reality. The “material” world is only a symphony of “materialized” qualities of the Universal Being,” not matter per se because matter per se does not exist. What we see as space is a “materialized” program of the Universal Mind. What appears to us as dimensions is the underlying nothingness holding the illusion of Reality, making it appear material. The Primordial Primary Quality is the Primary Ultimate Force, or Source, that powers all we see, experience, and measure. Everything is related to Everything else and is affected and conditioned by Everything else. Everything within the Universe is a message, information, and code to everything else. Energy and matter are the messages of the Universal Mind sent into nothingness to fertilize it. Relationships and communication among the myriad beings are the life of one organism. All the features of matter we experience are real in the sense that we experience the spacetime continuum, but all that is the result of programming and conditioning rather than energy and matter as physical realities per se. Everything was One and became a multitude, yet Everything stayed One on the most basic level. The story of One is the story of All. Every sense, every pain, and everything we feel are the messages of existence, messages of the Universal Mind in action, interconnecting the Web of the Universe into One Family. Absolute is the Ultimate uniting force of Everything. To be one and only is death. That’s why creating is needed. Without creating, there is no life. The Universe is the life of the Absolute. Something and Nothing are the Father and the Mother of the World. From One Absolute, there is an almost endless family dispersed through space in search of life and meaning, which is what we call existence.”

“According to Einstein, gravity is not a force but the shape of space curvature in the spacetime continuum. If gravity is not a force, and it is not, but the effect of the curvature of space, then the curvature of space is the effect of motion. This spacetime continuum and, consequently, the curvature of space would not be possible without spaceless space and timeless time. Spaceless space is infinity, and timeless time is eternity. Spaceless and timeless are the basis for space and time. Universal Mind is the basis for creation. This creation is the creation of the World (“matter”), space with curvatures, and time that can be “measured.” Without an absolute void, there would be no space, and there would be no time. Without space, time, in its real sense, is not possible.”

“[Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Nazism:] Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime. Now, just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianisms – the most finished example, the most perfected one, the most ruthless and refined one: that of National Socialism, the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheists, thinkers and many others, to the United States, a country of separation of church and state, that gave them welcome – if it’s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he’s doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins, “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary system? Again, this is not a difference of emphasis between us. To suggest that there’s something fascistic about me and about my beliefs is something I won't hear said and you shouldn't believe.”

“You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues. I'm not saying you're more intelligent than Aristotle, or wiser. For all I know, Aristotle's the cleverest person who ever lived. That's not the point. The point is only that science is cumulative, and we live later.”

“The gravitational waves of the first detection were generated by a collision of black holes in a galaxy 1.3 billion light-years away, and at a time when Earth was teeming with simple, single-celled organisms. While the ripple moved through space in all directions, Earth would, after another 800 million years, evolve complex life, including flowers and dinosaurs and flying creatures, as well as a branch of vertebrates called mammals. Among the mammals, a sub-branch would evolve frontal lobes and complex thought to accompany them. We call them primates. A single branch of these primates would develop a genetic mutation that allowed speech, and that branch—Homo Sapiens—would invent agriculture and civilization and philosophy and art and science. All in the last ten thousand years. Ultimately, one of its twentieth-century scientists would invent relativity out of his head, and predict the existence of gravitational waves. A century later, technology capable of seeing these waves would finally catch up with the prediction, just days before that gravity wave, which had been traveling for 1.3 billion years, washed over Earth and was detected. Yes, Einstein was a badass.”

“Einstein and Bergson held an extremely low opinion of technology - especially when compared to science. They were skeptical about its alleged benefits. 'What comes to the mind of a sensible person when hearing the word technology?' asked `Einstein. 'Avarice, exploitation, social divisions amongst people, class hatred,' he responded. Technology, in his view, could easily be considered the 'wayward son of our era.”

“Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin’s theory? Zero.”

“Einstein's secretary once said that if Einstein were born among the polar bears, he would still be Einstein. But unless polar bears were well versed in theoretical physics, that is not true. Einstein would not be Einstein. Which is not to take anything away from Einstein, or the polar bears, but simply to point out that he was part of a creative ecology, and trying to isolate him from it is not only silly but futile.”

“Einstein's iconoclasm and unyielding refusal of uncritically accept the common vision of the world are undoubtedly key to his achievements in theoretical physics. The theory of relativity could only have been invented by someone unafraid to reject centuries-old scientific assumptions. He was also remarkably courageous in opposing opponents far more powerful than himself—from the Nazis to the McCarthyites of America's Cold War era. Obrazoburstwo Einsteina i nieustępliwa odmowa bezkrytycznego przyjmowania powszechnej wizji świata są bez wątpienia kluczem do jego dokonań w dziedzinie fizyki teoretycznej. Teoria względności mogła zostać wymyślona tylko przez osobę, która nie bała się odrzucać wielowiekowych założeń naukowych. Był też niezwykle odważny przeciwstawianiu się przeciwnikom o wiele mocniejszych od siebie - od nazistów do makkartystów z czasów zimniej wojny w Ameryce.”

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

“For the universe to have an answer, there must be a universal perspective, what we might call a God perspective or Absolute perspective, and only from this perspective can the answer to everything be given. It is most certainly not a subjective human perspective, chosen for “convenience”. It is in fact the immaterial perspective of light, outside space and time, which sees the whole of existence as a single point! That’s what reality is – that one, ineffable point.”

“Einstein’s theory says nothing less than that all photons are, in their frame of reference, outside space and time. They don’t experience the passing of time and they don’t experience the traversing of any distances. The universe, for photons, is a mystical dimensionless point. Even if there were an infinite number of photons, they would all inhabit this inconceivable singularity beyond the reach of time and space. Can you begin to see? The realm of light, as described by Einstein’s supremely well tested equations, is astonishingly similar to what we have described as the r = 0 dimensionless domain: the realm of the mental. Immediately, the profoundest of questions arises. Are light and thought the same thing? Are photons, when considered from the correct perspective, mental rather than physical? When the sun shines on us, are we being bathed in the “thoughts” of the sun as well as its light? If photons do not experience space and time, and they do not have any mass, how else would you characterise them except as some sort of mind-like entities?”

“Einstein understood all material frames of reference to be relative to each other and to have no absolute material frame of reference to condition them, i.e. he denied the existence of the ether. It never once occurred to him that all material frames of reference are in fact relative to an absolute mental frame of reference, namely that of light, the source of the absolute, the frequency source of the spacetime, material world.”

“Light is not something different from thought and mind. It is thought and mind. Light – thought/mind – is exactly that which stands outside the material order and causes and conditions the material order. Einstein’s special theory of relativity, when properly understood means that mind provides the absolute conditionality for all material frames of reference, i.e. all such frames of reference depend on an absolute non-spacetime reference frame of frequency (which is stationary relative to spacetime, thus providing the true “ether” and meaning that we live in an absolute, objective world and not a relative, subjective world as Einstein’s ether-less theory would have it).”

“I realized that more and more I was saying, 'It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.' And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided — my wife and I — that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, 'Well, the authorities say such and such '.”