Quotes from Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

Albert Einstein ·  130 pages

Rating: (14.1K votes)


“Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...?”
― Albert Einstein, quote from Relativity: The Special and the General Theory


“If you've never done anything wrong it's probably because you have never tried anything new.”
― Albert Einstein, quote from Relativity: The Special and the General Theory


“An observer who is sitting eccentrically on the disc K' is sensible of a force which acts outwards in a radial direction, and which would be interpreted as an effect of inertia (centrifugal force) by an observer who was at rest with respect to the original reference-body K. But the observer on the disc may regard his disc as a reference body which is “at rest”; on the basis of the general principle of relativity he is justified in doing this. The force acting on himself, and in fact on all other bodies which are at rest relative to the disc, he regards as the effect of a gravitational field.”
― Albert Einstein, quote from Relativity: The Special and the General Theory


“result: every description of events in space involves the use of a rigid body to which such events have to be referred. The resulting relationship takes for granted that the laws of Euclidean geometry hold for ‘distances’, the ‘distance’ being represented physically by means of the convention of two marks on a rigid body.”
― Albert Einstein, quote from Relativity: The Special and the General Theory


“of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended.”
― Albert Einstein, quote from Relativity: The Special and the General Theory



“if, relative to K, K’ is a uniformly moving co-ordinate system devoid of rotation, then natural phenomena run their course with respect to K’ according to exactly the same general laws as with respect to K. This statement is called the Principle of Relativity (in the restricted sense).”
― Albert Einstein, quote from Relativity: The Special and the General Theory


About the author

Albert Einstein
Born place: in Ulm, Germany
Born date March 14, 1879
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