Brian Greene quotes

Brian Greene is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and popular science author, renowned for his work on string theory. His engaging books and presentations have brought complex physics topics to a broad audience. He is also the co-founder of the World Science Festival, aiming to make science accessible to all. Here are 112 of his quotes:

The real question is whether all your pondering and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That's what it all comes down to.

Brian Greene

I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly - or ever - gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe.

Brian Greene

... things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren't, we wouldn't be here to notice.

Brian Greene

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level.

Brian Greene

The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.

Brian Greene

No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail.

Brian Greene

Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.

Brian Greene

Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.

Brian Greene

Cosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it's no wonder. We're storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?

Brian Greene

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that's been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.

Brian Greene

Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

Brian Greene

Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.

Brian Greene

Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.

Brian Greene

We might be the holographic image of a two-dimensional structure.

Brian Greene

I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence.

Brian Greene

Our eyes only see the big dimensions, but beyond those there are others that escape detection because they are so small.

Brian Greene

Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.

Brian Greene

The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.

Brian Greene

Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.

Brian Greene

To tell you the truth, I've never met anybody who can envision more than three dimensions. There are some who claim they can, and maybe they can; it's hard to say.

Brian Greene

One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease.

Brian Greene

Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.

Brian Greene