Hermann Minkowski Quotes

The assumption of the contraction of the electron in Lorentz's theory must be introduced at an earlier stage than Lorentz has actually done.

The rigid electron is in my view a monster in relation to Maxwell's equations, whose innermost harmony is the principle of relativity.

The whole world appears resolved into such world-lines. And I should like to say beforehand that, according to my opinion, it would be possible for the physical laws to find their fullest expression as correlations of these world-lines.

By laying down the relativity postulate from the outset, sufficient means have been created for deducing henceforth the complete series of Laws of Mechanics from the principle of conservation of energy (and statements concerning the form of the energy) alone.

It came as a tremendous surprise, for in his student days Einstein had been a lazy dog... He never bothered about mathematics at all.

H. A. Lorentz has found out the Relativity theorem and has created the Relativity postulate as a hypothesis that electrons and matter suffer contractions in consequence of their motion according to a certain law. A. Einstein has brought out the point very clearly, that this postulate is not an artificial hypothesis but is rather a new way of comprehending the time-concept, which is forced upon us by observation of natural phenomena.

The word postulate of relativity... appears to me very stale... I should rather like to give this statement the name Postulate of the absolute world (or briefly, world-postulate).

Many authors say that classical mechanics stand in opposition to the relativity postulate, which is taken to be the basic of the new Electro-dynamics

[Zurich,] where the students, even the most capable among them, ... are accustomed to get everything spoon-fed.

Oh, that Einstein, always cutting lectures... I really would not believe him capable of it.

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.

It would be very unsatisfactory if the new way of looking at the time-concept, which permits a Lorentz transformation, were to be confined to a single part of Physics.