Brian Greene Quotes

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

Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding.

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

Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

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.

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.

I was holding [my four-year-old daughter] and I said, 'Sophia, I love you more than anything in the universe.' And she turned to me and said, 'Daddy, universe or multiverse?'

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

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

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

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

If the theory turns out to be right, that will be tremendously thick and tasty icing on the cake.

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

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.

String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives.

Far from being accidental details, the properties of nature's basic building blocks are deeply entwined with the fabric of space and time.

The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.

Gravity is matter’s sugar daddy.

But, as Einstein once said, “For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”5

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

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?

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.

Einstein's theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things. Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum - for small things.

A unified theory would put us at the doorstep of a vast universe of things that we could finally explore with precision.

Experimental evidence is the final arbiter of right and wrong.

How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?

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

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

When I give this talk to a physics audience, I remove the quotes from my 'Theorem'.

A watch worn by a particle of light would not tick at all. Light realizes the dreams of Ponce de Leon and the cosmetics industry: it doesn't age.

...quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

We can certainly go further than cats, but why should it be that our brains are somehow so suited to the universe that our brains will be able to understand the deepest workings?

I may be a Jewish scientist, but I would be tickled silly if one day I were reincarnated as a Baptist preacher.

Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.

Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.

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

I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.

I've had various experiences where I've been called by Hollywood studios to look at a script or comment on various scientific ideas that they're trying to inject into a story.

I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for.

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

Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable.

I can't stand clutter. I can't stand piles of stuff. And whenever I see it, I basically just throw the stuff away.

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.