Quotes from Carlo Rovelli

What counts is not the pen used for writing but the poetry that is written. The reason we take interest in an automobile engine is not because it makes wheels turn; it is because it takes us places that we could not reach by foot. The turning wheels are just the mechanism of an instrument that allows us to journey.

What causes us to suffer is not in the past or the future: it is here, now, in our memory, in our expectations. We long for timelessness, we endure the passing of time: we suffer time. Time is suffering.

Abstract thought can anticipate by centuries hypotheses that find a use—or confirmation—in scientific inquiry.

I periodi di vacanza sono quelli in cui si studia meglio, perché non si è distratti dalla scuola.

It is with sadness that every so often I spend a few hours on the internet, reading or listening to the mountain of stupidity dressed up with the word "quantum.

Ten years before understanding that time is slowed down by mass,21 Einstein had realized that it was slowed down by speed.22 The consequence of this discovery for our basic intuitive perception of time is the most devastating of all.

It is thus that serious scientists are made.

Ma non è l'assenza che provoca dolore. Sono l'affetto e l'amore. Se non ci fosse affetto, se non ci fosse amore, non ci sarebbe il dolore dell'assenza. Per questo anche il dolore dell'assenza, in fondo, è buono e bello, perché si nutre di quello che dà senso alla vita.

Proper time" depends not only on where you are and your degree of proximity to masses; it depends also on the speed at which you move. It's a strange enough fact in itself, but its consequences are extraordinary. Hold on tight, because we are about to take

We are processes, events, composite and limited in space and time. But if we are not an individual entity, what is it that founds our identity and its unity?

The first is that every one of us identifies with a point of view in the world.

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

To accept uncertainty doesn't detract from our sense of mystery.

The second ingredient on which our identity is based is the same as for the chariot. In the process of reflecting the world, we organize it into entities: we conceive of the world by grouping and segmenting it as best we can in a continuous process that is more or less uniform and stable, the better to interact with it.

we are the reflection of the idea of ourselves that we receive back from our kind.

But there is a third ingredient in the foundation of our identity, and it is probably the essential one—it is the reason this delicate discussion is taking place in a book about time: memory.

What makes it so—that I am Carlo—and that my hair and my nails and my feet are considered part of me, as well as my anger and my dreams, and that I consider myself to be the same Carlo as yesterday, the same as tomorrow; the one who thinks, suffers, and perceives?

Genuis hesitates

It is the curious local structure of the present that produces black holes.

the spatiotemporal entity of Einstein.

What does what we know or don't know have to do with the laws that govern the world?

The primal substance of our thoughts is an extremely rich gathering of information that's accumulated, exchanged, and continually elaborated. Even

If the present has no meaning, then what "exists" in the universe? Is not what "exists" precisely what is here "in the present"? The whole idea that the universe exists now in a certain configuration and changes together with the passage of time simply doesn't stack up anymore.

Augustine's exposition of the idea is quite beautiful. It is based on our experience of music. When we listen to a hymn, the meaning of a sound is given by the ones that come before and after it. Music can occur only in time, but if we are always in the present moment, how is it possible to hear it? It is possible, Augustine observes, because our consciousness is based on memory and on anticipation.