All Quotes

"Curae canitiem inducunt."

"Custode et cura natura potentior omni."

"In politics, it seems that Einstein was called naive for thoughts that we now understand to have been ahead of his time. Could the same have been true of his later science? For science, the question to be answered is the paradox of Einstein's failed last years. I would suggest that the resolution of the paradox is that Einstein's dissent from quantum mechanics and immersion in the search for a unified field theory were not failures but anticipations. After all, even if many string theorists would disagree with Einstein about the incompleteness of quantum mechanics, much of what goes on in string theory these days looks a lot like what Einstein was doing in his Princeton years, which was trying to find new mathematics that might extend general relativity to a unification of all the forces and particles in nature."

"When we finally got our hands on the paper, we quickly realized that Einstein had put his finger on the essence of the problem and had delineated when it has a solution, before the invention of the modern quantum theory. Moreover, Einstein wrote with great lucidity about the subject, so that it seemed as if he were speaking directly to us, a century later. There was nothing dated or quaint about the analysis. For the first time in a long while, I found myself thinking, “Wow, this man really was a genius.”"

"It was Einstein who had introduced almost all the revolutionary ideas underlying quantum theory, and who saw first what these ideas meant. His ultimate rejection of quantum theory was akin to Dr. Frankenstein’s shunning of the monster he had originally created for the betterment of mankind. Had Einstein not done so, in all likelihood he would be seen as the father of the modern theory."

"The one man who was, during the last years, certainly by far Einstein's best friend, and in some ways strangely resembled him most, was Kurt Gödel, The great logician. They were very different in almost every personal way — Einstein gregarious, happy, full of laughter and common sense, and Gödel extremely solemn, very serious, quite solitary, and distrustful of common sense as a means of arriving at the truth. But they shared a fundamental quality: both went directly and wholeheartedly to the questions at the very center of things."

"I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you."

"Albert Einstein, who was admired as almost superhuman and whose fate it was to become one of the most famous people on the planet, never identified with the image the collective mind had created of him. He remained humble, egoless. In fact, he spoke of "a grotesque contradiction between what people consider to be my achievements and abilities and the reality of who I am and what I am capable of.""

"This illusory sense of self (the ego) is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only in to the reality of space and time but also into human nature, referred to as "an optical illusion of consciousness.""

"What I mean when I suggest a correspondence between good science and good poetic overtones is perhaps illustrated by a sentence from The Development of Modern Physics, by Einstein and Infeld. Expounding the rudiments of relativity, these authors write: "A straight line is the simplest and most trivial example of a curve." The statement is a simple scientific one yet in the perfection of its simplicity and scientific accuracy it becomes, as well, a very beautiful poetic statement."

"You're a very clever boy, Einstein, an extremely clever boy, but you have one great fault: you'll never let yourself be told anything."

"Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it."

"Einstein's theory of relativity has advanced our ideas of the structure of the cosmos a step further. It is as if a wall which separated us from Truth has collapsed. Wider expanses and greater depths are now exposed to the searching eye of knowledge, regions of which we had not even a presentiment. It has brought us much nearer to grasping the plan that underlies all physical happening."

"After Riemann had made known his discoveries, mathematicians busied themselves with working out his system of geometrical ideas formally; chief among these were Christoffel, Ricci, and Levi-Civita. Riemann... clearly left the real development of his ideas in the hands of some subsequent scientist whose genius as a physicist could rise to equal flights with his own as a mathematician. After a lapse of seventy years this mission has been fulfilled by Einstein."

"His work revolved around three rules which apply to all science, our problems, and times:"

":1. Out of clutter, find simplicity;"

":2. From discord make harmony; and finally"

":3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

"So, from a Bayesian perspective, what Einstein did is still induction, and still covered by the notion of a simple prior (Occam prior) that gets updated by new evidence. It's just the prior was over the possible characters of physical law, and observing other physical laws let Einstein update his model of the character of physical law, which he then used to predict a particular law of gravitation. If you didn't have the concept of a "character of physical law", what Einstein did would look like magic—plucking the correct model of gravitation out of the space of all possible equations, with vastly insufficient evidence. But Einstein, by looking at other laws, cut down the space of possibilities for the next law. He learned the alphabet in which physics was written, constraints to govern his answer. Not magic, but reasoning on a higher level, across a wider domain, than what a naive reasoner might conceive to be the "model space" of only this one law. So from a probability-theoretic standpoint, Einstein was still data-driven—he just used the data he already had, more effectively. Compared to any alternate Earths that demanded huge quantities of additional data from astronomical observations and clocks on airplanes to hit them over the head with General Relativity."

"De gustibus non est disputandum."

"In considering the structure of the universe... Einstein assumed... the irregularities in the distribution of matter can be neglected [i.e., the universe is homogeneous]. ...he noted that the largest velocities then assigned to the stars and nebulae were very small compared with the velocity of light. In 1917... the immense red-shifts of the farther nebulae were unknown. Einstein, therefore, considered a model of the universe in which matter was distributed in a uniform and continuous manner, the relative motion of the various parts being negligible [i.e., a static universe]. Following Seeliger, he found it impossible to regard the system as filling the whole of [infinite] Euclidean space. Also he could not regard the universe as an island in infinite space. For, in applying a well-known theorem of Boltzmann relating the densities at various points of space in which a distribution of particles is moving at random, he showed that zero density at the boundary would necessitate zero density at all points inside. Thus it appeared to Einstein that the universe as a whole could be neither infinite nor have a finite boundary. Hence space as a whole could not be Euclidean. ...In the classical picture time and space are distinct, time being infinite in duration and space Euclidean. In devising an alternative model Einstein retained this world-wide separation of time and space, despite the fusion of the two concepts in General Relativity, but he assumed that space as a whole was of the type known as spherical."

"Owing to departures from strict homogeneity, the actual world cannot be exactly of Einstein's form. The instability of Einstein's universe indicates that in general, a system which is nearly, but not exactly, of this form will tend to depart further and further from it with lapse of time. Consequently, Einstein's model cannot permanently represent the smoothed-out universe of nebulae. It is possible, or course, that the actual universe was much closer to this model in the remote past than it is now. ...It has even been suggested that the Einstein configuration was an unstable equilibrium state through which the universe slowly passed in expanding from an initial 'explosive' phase of small volume and high density."

"Einstein was a world-famous genius and people I knew used to remark, "You spend a good deal of time with Einstein. He has a perfect brain, doesn't he?" Well, I have never known what is meant by a "perfect brain." I do know that Einstein's mind was very human and had many defects. Einstein was far slower than Jancsi von Neumann to derive mathematical identities. His memory could be faulty, at least after 1933. And he was hardly interested in the details of physics. For a man like Edward Teller, developing the details of a physics problem was passionately important. For Einstein, it was not. In all spheres of life, Einstein's greatest pleasure was in finding, and later expressing, basic principles. But Einstein's understanding was deeper than even Jancsi von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary plea sure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything so original. No modern physicist has."

"A clear pattern emerges... he latches on to some perceived fundamental weakness or contradiction in existing physical theory and worries over it for long periods of time—as long as it takes. He is concerned not to exploit existing ideas but to transcend them. This restless style is not necessarily a recipe for success. Einstein did not play a creative role in the development of physics after 1925... The basic difficulty was that Einstein believed he saw difficulties in the basic foundations of quantum theory and that, characteristically, he wished to overhaul the theory rather than to exploit it. While his colleagues were applying quantum theory with great success to elucidate the workings of atoms, nuclei, and bulk matter, Einstein held aloof."

"Most scientists are happiest when they are making clear progress, solving some perhaps small but well-defined and significant problems by clever adaptations of known techniques. Most people—perhaps all—feel acutely anxious and unhappy when they are "groping in the dark" or find themselves poised uneasily upon "no firm foundation." We must admire the courage of those rare individuals who, like Einstein, systematically seek out such situations."

"It is quite easy to include a weight for empty space in the equations of gravity. Einstein did so in 1917, introducing what came to be known as the cosmological constant into his equations. His motivation was to construct a static model of the universe. To achieve this, he had to introduce a negative mass density for empty space, which just canceled the average positive density due to matter. With zero total density, gravitational forces can be in static equilibrium. Hubble's subsequent discovery of the expansion of the universe, of course, made Einstein's static model universe obsolete. ...The fact is that to this day we do not understand in a deep way why the vacuum doesn't weigh, or (to say the same thing in another way) why the cosmological constant vanishes, or (to say it in yet another way) why Einstein's greatest blunder was a mistake."

"Einstein understood the central concepts of general relativity years before he developed the detailed equations."

"Capitalism is based on this arrangement, which famous physicist Albert Einstein explained quite simply: “The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he [sic] is paid, both measured in terms of real value.... What the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.”"

"We all love life it is like a car with Humans inside it and at every stop we unload a passenger to the grave, and as Albert Einstein said life is like riding a bicycle to maintain your balance you must keep moving, and the response to this saying is that as lon as death comes, movement does not come from the human being.~~ June 20, 2025"

"No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place."

"When you reach the top of the mountain, keep climbing."

"Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed, that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud which appears. Death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that. But there is one thing which always remains clear. It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death. Then what is the one pure and clear thing?"

"Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

"A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin, and asked: "Is there really a paradise and a hell?" "Who are you?" inquired Hakuin. "I am a samurai," the warrior replied. "You, a soldier!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar." Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head." As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here open the gates of hell!" At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed. "Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin."

"A Zen master named Gisan asked a young student to bring him a pail of water to cool his bath. The student brought the water and, after cooling the bath, threw on to the ground the little that was left over. "You dunce!" the master scolded him. "Why didn't you give the rest of the water to the plants? What right have you to waste even a drop of water in this temple? The young student attained Zen in that instant. He changed his name to Tekisui, which means a drop of water."

"The Layman was sitting in his thatched cottage one day studying the sūtras. "Difficult, difficult," he said; "like trying to scatter ten measures of sesame seed all over a tree." "Easy, easy," Mrs. Pang said; "like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed." "Neither difficult nor easy," Ling Zhao said; "on the hundred grass tips, the great Masters' meaning.""

"The Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen."

"A diabolo, qui est simia dei."

"Abbati, medico, patronoque intima pande."

"Acquirit qui tuetur."

"Acta non verba."

"Ancipiti plus ferit ense gula."

"Aegrescit medendo."

"Aegroto dum anima est, spes est."

"Aeque pars ligni curvi ac recti valet igni."

"Age quod agis."

"Aliis si licet, tibi non licet."

"An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur? (alternatively: regatur orbis)"

"Aliquando dormitat Homerus."

"Aliquis in omnibus est nullus in singulis."