"There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case"
About this Quote
The key phrase is “limiting case.” It’s a technical term wearing a moral suit. Newton isn’t “wrong,” he’s incomplete; his laws survive inside relativity when speeds are low and gravity is weak. That’s more than a conciliatory gesture to the old guard. It’s Einstein asserting a standard for progress: new frameworks should explain why earlier ones worked as well as they did, where they break, and how their apparent certainty was a special circumstance. You can hear the implicit critique of theories that merely replace rather than absorb.
Context matters: Einstein is the architect of one revolution and a witness to the next. Quantum mechanics was rising, and he had deep reservations about its foundations. This quote reads like both an olive branch and a demand: if a new theory is “more comprehensive,” it must recover the successful predictions of the old, not just dazzle with novelty. Under the elegance is a hard-nosed idea about truth in physics: we don’t get final answers, we get better nesting dolls.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Einstein, Albert. (2026, January 15). There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-could-be-no-fairer-destiny-for-any-physical-34582/
Chicago Style
Einstein, Albert. "There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-could-be-no-fairer-destiny-for-any-physical-34582/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-could-be-no-fairer-destiny-for-any-physical-34582/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.









