I... interpret mechanics as a theory of relations between variables, rather than the theory of the evolution of variables in time. - Carlo Rovelli

General relativity has changed our understanding of space and time. ...The spacetime of general relativity ...is likely to be just a classical approximation that loses its meaning in the quantum theory, for the same reason the trajectory of a particle does.

Listening to a cultivated person of today who jokes and almost boasts of his scientific ignorance is as sad as listening to a scientist who boasts of not having read any poem.

The way evolution is treated in general relativity, is... subtle... Change is not described as evolution of physical variables as a function of a preferred independent observable time variable. Instead, it is described in terms of a functional relation among equal footing variables... as... (T₁,T₂)... In general relativity, there isn’t a preferred and observable quantity that plays the role of independent parameter of the evolution... General relativity describes the relative evolution of observable quantities, not the evolution of quantities as functions of a preferred one. ...[w]ith general relativity we have understood that the Newtonian "big clock" ticking away the "true universal time" is not there.