Today we’re celebrating our 29th anniversary, and we call it Einstein Day!

Every year we shut down the phones for a couple of hours at lunchtime to celebrate our successes and toast our future. This year we’re presenting one Einstein Award for Excellence and two Natural Brilliance Awards.

Folks come dressed as Albert Einstein or his wife Elsa, we recite our favorite Einstein quotes (real and imagined), receive countless and mindless gifts, and everyone receives their performance bonuses for 2009.

It’s been our tradition since we hired our first employee. We call it Einstein Day, because as our unofficial mascot was born in March.  Why Einstein? Publically, we say it is because we help you unleash your genius. Privately, Paul, the genius that he is, surmised that if Einstein died in April 1955 and he and I were born in June 1955, it is possible that Einstein came back as the two of us. Of course, I just roll my eyes, but not too much just in case he is right. 

To follow are quotes that employees will be reading today, vying for a fabulous prize. The readers will be judged not only on the relevance of the quote but on their delivery.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.  I often think in music.  I live my daydreams in music.  I see my life in terms of music . . . I get most joy in life out of music.

 The deeper we search, the more we find there is to know, and as long as human life exists, I believe that it will always be so.

I seem to have misplaced my slide rule.  Has anyone seen my slide rule?

Love many, trust few, and learn to paddle your own canoe.

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and mind.

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling love.  How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?  Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour.  Sit with that special girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.  That’s relativity.

A butterfly is not a mole, but that is not something any butterfly should regret.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

 Space is big.  Really big.  You just won’t believe how vastly, mind bogglingly big it is.  I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

 Only two things are infinite.  The universe and human stupidity, and I are not sure about the former.

 If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

Violence may at times have quickly cleared away an obstruction, but it has never proved itself to be creative.

Did you see the size of that quark!

When your mind rejects new ideas, your mind dies.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.

If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts!                                                                                                                  

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools. 

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

Houston, we have a problem. 

I lived in that solitude which is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity. 

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Q:  How many Einstein’s does it take to change a light bulb?   A:  That depends on the speed of the changer and the mass of the bulb, or vice versa of course.  Then it just might be easier to leave the bulb alone and change the room.  It’s all relative.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence; it can only be attained through understanding.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mystery.  It is the source of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Hope you’re having a brilliant day, too!

Pete