Yes, Einstein wrote something along the lines of “time is an illusion.” But it’s not altogether clear what Einstein meant — and to understand what he might have been saying, we must dig into the circumstances that caused him to write it.
A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion
A close friend of Einstein’s, Michele Besso, passed away in 1955. Only a month before his own death, Einstein wrote to Besso’s grieving family.
His letter said, “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
Obviously, at the time of his writing Einstein had some profound thoughts about the nature of time.
