
(Goodreads.com)
“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
― Albert Einstein
- Gogole AI Overview
That famous Albert Einstein quote, found on
Goodreads, is: “The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion“. He added, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once”. This reflects his belief, rooted in physics, that time isn’t a universal, absolute flow but a construct, particularly in relativity, as he explained in a letter about a friend’s passing.
- Full Context: In a letter to the family of his late friend Michele Besso, Einstein wrote, “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”.
- Meaning: Einstein saw time as a dimension where past, present, and future coexist, and our perception of a linear flow is a human experience, a “stubborn illusion”.
- Source: This quote is widely shared on Goodreads and Scientific American.