Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity was presented on this day in 1916. Earlier in the year, the Swiss physicist Albert Einstein published “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity” in which he proposed a new theory of gravity based on the curvature of space. Learn about Einstein and his famous Theory when you visit my In-”sites” to Einstein site.

Click on the following cartoon to view additional Einstein-related cartoons.

Celebrate today with some Einstein wisdom as you read through the quotes below. I have posted 83 of Einstein’s quotes…one quote, for each year that has passed since his relativity revelation.

1. Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.
2. Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
3. Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
4. Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.
5. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
6. I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
7. I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.
8. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
9. Imagination is more important than knowledge…
10. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
11. Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
12. My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
13. Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
14. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
15. Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
16. The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
17. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
18. The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
19. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
20. The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
21. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
22. The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
23. To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
24. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
25. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
26. Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
27. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
28. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
29. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
30. Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me.
31. 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.
32. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
33. Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton…Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
34. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
35. Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
36. I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.
37. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
38. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
39. A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
40. I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
41. God is subtle but he is not malicious.
42. Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
43. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
44. The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
45. Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
46. Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
47. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
48. Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
49. There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.
50. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
51. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
52. Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
53. The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
54. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
55. God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
56. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
57. Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
58. Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
59. The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
60. We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
61. Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
62. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
63. Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
64. Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
65. The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.
66. No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
67. Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
68. The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
69. Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing.
70. Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
71. Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.
72. The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.
73. Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
74. Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
75. He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
76. To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
77. Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust – we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
78. People do not grow old no matter how long we live. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.
79. I am content in my later years. I have kept my good humor and take neither myself nor the next person seriously.
80. Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
81. The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
82. A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.
83. The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent or absorbing positive knowledge.

These games are not just for physics students! They are absolutely addicting for anyone who likes a bit of a mind challenge. You can access 50+ games that will inspire and boggle you and your student on the Physics Game site. You can also choose the game or games that you would like students to play by copying the code into your teacher webpage or classroom blog. I have embedded a couple of the games I enjoyed below, but I must tell you it was hard to choose just two! Just a note…some of the games are sponsored and include an advertising introduction. I found the challenge of the games made up for the minor annoyance (most of the time). By the way, you need to have Flash installed on your computers in order to see the games below and you can stop the commercial (and sound) on the first game if you find it annoying.

Now that you have had time to play a couple of the games think about ways you could use these games in your classroom or lab to inspire and challenge your students. Perhaps you could give students an opportunity to write a review of a game or ask them to rate the games. Maybe you could ask students to find games that support various science units you are working on in class. Perhaps students could challenge other students to a duel or maybe you could run a timed competition between groups of students. Graph student results over the course of three weeks. I’m sure you will find other ways to spark your students’ competitive spirits! Please share your ideas by clicking on the comment link below!