Understanding The Universe Quotes

• Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

  Carl Sagan

  Education, Atheist, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.430, Ballantine Books

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• We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

  Stephen Hawking

  Stars, Cheer Up, Humility

  "Der Spiegel", October 17, 1988.

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• The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, God

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• My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

  Stephen Hawking

  Science, Simple, Goal

  "Stephen Hawking's Universe". Book by John Boslough, 1985.

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• I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Funny, Science, History

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• If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

  Stephen Hawking

  People, Able, Principles

  Stephen W. Hawking (1990). “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes”, Bantam

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• After sleeping through a hundred million centuries, we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life.

  Richard Dawkins

  Sleep, Eye, Color

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder”, p.21, Penguin UK

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• Keep in mind that every single generation before us has worked under the assumption that they possessed all the major tools for understanding the universe, and they were all wrong, without exception.

  David Eagleman

  Understanding, Mind, Generations

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.232, Vintage

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• You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.

  Terence McKenna

  Responsibility, Mind Blowing, Understanding

  Terence McKenna (1998). “True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival”, M J F Books

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• Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were learning to unravel, was poetry.

  Primo Levi

  Understanding, Tables, Matter

  Primo Levi (1995). “The Periodic Table”, Schocken

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• Logic only tells us what's there; it can't really address what isn't. Even the most devoted empiricist must admit that we have no hope of understanding the universe. Some things are unknowable.

  Megan Chance

  Understanding, Addresses, Logic

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• After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

  Richard Dawkins

  Life, Gratitude, Morning

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• I found it stimulating to study the sciences. It was a side of understanding the universe that I hadn't been exposed to.

  Jane Siberry

  Understanding, Sides, Study

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• The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe.

  Stephen Hawking

  Race, Order, Understanding

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• We are the only instrument for understanding the universe. We have to ground it in human beings.

  Jonathan Nolan

  Understanding, Instruments, Humans

  Source: collider.com

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• At every stage of understanding the universe better, the benefits to civilisation have been immeasurable. None of those big leaps were made with us knowing what was going to happen.

  Brian Cox

  Knowing, Understanding, Benefits

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• In our travels, we have come across many equations--math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably won’t even need a pencil.

  Libba Bray

  Stars, Math, Simple

  Libba Bray (2009). “Going Bovine”, p.428, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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