Brian Greene quotes - page 2

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 pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand. (Brian Greene)

The fact that I don't have any particular need for religion doesn't mean that I have a need to cast religion aside the way some of my colleagues do.

Brian Greene

According to inflation, the more than 100 billion galaxies, sparkling throughout space like heavenly diamonds, are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky. To me, this realization is one of the greatest wonders of the modern scientific age.

Brian Greene

For me it's been very exciting to contribute to the public's understanding of how rich and wondrous science is.

Brian Greene

My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.

Brian Greene

Art makes us human, music makes us human, and I deeply feel that science makes us human.

Brian Greene

String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.

Brian Greene

The idea that there could be other universes out there is really one that stretches the mind in a great way.

Brian Greene

The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.

Brian Greene

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.

Brian Greene

Physicists describe the two properties of physical laws-that they do not depend on when or where you use them-as symmetries of nature. By this usage physicists mean that nature treats every moment in time and every location in space identically-symmetrically-by ensuring that the same fundamental laws are in operation. Much in the same manner that they affect art and music, such symmetries are deeply satisfying; they highlight an order and coherence in the workings of nature. The elegance of rich, complex, and diverse phenomena emerging from a simple set of universal laws is at least part of what physicists mean when they invoke the term "beautiful." (Brian Greene)

I'd say many features of string theory don't mesh with what we observe in everyday life.

Brian Greene

Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture.

Brian Greene

In my own research when I'm working with equations, I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing if I'm solely relying on the mathematics for my understanding. I need to have a visual picture in my mind. I'm constantly translating from the math to some intuitive mind's-eye picture.

Brian Greene

Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. 'Where did the totality of reality come from?' 'Did time have a beginning?'

Brian Greene

We're on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions.

Brian Greene

There's no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator.

Brian Greene

We are living through a remarkably privileged era, when certain deep truths about the cosmos are still within reach of the human spirit of exploration.

Brian Greene

I think the relationship between memory and time is a very deep and tricky one, to tell you the truth. I don't consider memory another sense. I do consider memory that which allows us to think that time flows.

Brian Greene

There's a picture of my dorm room in the college yearbook as the most messy, most disgusting room on the Harvard campus, where I was an undergraduate.

Brian Greene

My best teachers were not the ones who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by questions they couldn't answer. (Brian Greene)

The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand. If someone wants to place the word 'God' on those collections of words, it's OK with me.

Brian Greene

All you are is a bag of particles acting out the laws of physics. That to me is pretty clear.

Brian Greene

In the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos.

Brian Greene

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

Brian Greene

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Brian Greene

Brian Greene - Image

Photo: Kurt Raschke, CC BY 2.0

Occupation: American Physicist
Born: February 9, 1963
Quotes count: 112
Wikipedia: Brian Greene

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