Carlo Rovelli

Quotes

1. In the elementary equations of the world, the arrow of time appears only where there is heat. The link between time and heat is... fundamental: every time a difference is manifested between the past and the future, heat is involved.

2. 

   The difference between past and future... cause and effect... memory and hope... regret and intention... in the elementary laws that describe the mechanisms of the world, there is no such difference.

3. 

   When two friends meet... after one has lived in the mountains and the other at sea level, the watches... will show different times. ...Neither is truer than the other. ...Times are legion: a different one for every point in space. ...there is a vast multitude of them. ...Every clock has its proper time. ...Einstein has shown how to calculate the difference... The world is not like a platoon advancing at the pace of a single commander. It is a network of events affecting each other. ...Physics does not describe how things evolve "in time" but how things evolve in their own times, and how "times" evolve relative to each other.

   Time has lost... its unity.

4. 

   Children grow up and discover that the world is not as it seemed within the four walls of their homes. Humankind as a whole does the same.

   p. 11

5. 

   The idea that a well-defined now exists throughout the universe is an illusion, an illegitimate extrapolation of our own experience

   p. 44

6. 

   The World is Made of Events, not Things.

   p. 85

7. 

   But it isn’t absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.

   p. 105

That’s all the quotes.

7 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more