Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.

The line is a witty rebuke to the temptation to explain human experience with the language of physics. By invoking “gravitation,” Einstein playfully contrasts a universal, law-governed force with the messy, contingent realm of emotion and choice. The joke also works as a warning against category errors: even the most powerful scientific theories do not automatically translate into explanations of love, desire, or moral responsibility. In quotation culture, the remark has become a shorthand for Einstein’s public persona—brilliant yet humorous—and for the broader idea that scientific causation has limits when applied to subjective or social phenomena.

“Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”