Brian Greene famous quotes

I like to think that Einstein would look at string theory’s journey and smile, enjoying the theory’s remarkable geometrical features while feeling kinship with fellow travelers on the long and winding road toward unification.
-- Brian Greene

#Journey #Thinking #Long

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.
-- Brian Greene

#Space #Would Be #Bread

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

#Kids #Civilization #Musician

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

#Real #Analysis #Life Is

Quantum Mechanics is different. Its weirdness is evident without comparison. It is harder to train your mind to have quantum mechanical tuition, because quantum mechanics shatters our own personal, individual conception of reality
-- Brian Greene

#Reality #Mind #Tuition

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?'
-- Brian Greene

#Daughter #Motivation #I Love You More

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

#Perception #World #Patterns

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

#Answers #Sometimes #Substitutes

Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.
-- Brian Greene

#Exploring #Uncertainty

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

#Theory #Precision #Universe

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

#Pathways #Care #Realizing

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

#Nature #Motivation #Inspiration

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

#Avant Garde #Composer #Mathematician

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

#Stories #Wonder #Creation

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

#Cat #Trying #Matter

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

#Confusion #Understanding #Process

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

#Asking #Answers #May

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

#Ease #Wonder #Boundaries

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

#Upheaval #Mathematics #Century

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

#Thinking #Want #Moments

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

#Eye #Math #Understanding

Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it.
-- Brian Greene

#Principles #Needs #Scientist

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

#Believe #Self Confidence #Emotional

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

#Creativity #Men #Inspire

All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns; be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression.
-- Brian Greene

#Stars #Numbers #Patterns

If string theory is right, the microscopic fabric of our universe is a richly intertwined multidimensional labyrinth within which the strings of the universe endlessly twist and vibrate, rhythmically beating out the laws of the cosmos.
-- Brian Greene

#Law #Labyrinth #Twists

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

#Reality #Physics #Universe

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

#Block #Space #Details

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

#Everyday #Mesh #Strings

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

#Law #Lines #Physics

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

#Our World #Physics #Mechanic

Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.
-- Brian Greene

#Understanding #Insight

Writing for the stage is different from writing for a book. You want to write in a way that an actor has material to work with, writing in the first person not the third person, and pulling out the dramatic elements in a bigger way for a stage presentation.
-- Brian Greene

#Book #Writing #Firsts

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

#Stars #Reflection #Majestic

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

#Wrestling #Dark #Would Be

String theory is the most developed theory with the capacity to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics in a consistent manner. I do believe the universe is consistent, and therefore I do believe that general relativity and quantum mechanics should be put together in a manner that makes sense.
-- Brian Greene

#Believe #Together #Mechanic

Supersymmetry is a theory which stipulates that for every known particle there should be a partner particle. For instance, the electron should be paired with a supersymmetric 'selectron,' quarks ought to have 'squark' partners, and so on.
-- Brian Greene

#Should #Partners #Theory

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

#Beautiful #Want #Explanation

The melded nature of space and time is intimately woven with properties of light speed. The inviolable nature of the speed of light is actually, in Einstein's hands, talking about the inviolable nature of cause and effect.
-- Brian Greene

#Light #Hands #Talking

The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you'll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you'll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.
-- Brian Greene

#Ideas #Energy #Molecules

The absolute worst thing that you ever can do, in my opinion, in bringing science to the general public, is be condescending or judgmental. It is so opposite to the way science needs to be brought forth.
-- Brian Greene

#Opposites #Needs #Way

The main challenge that television presents is that I have a tendency to say things with a great deal of precision and accuracy. Often a description of that sort, which will work in a book because people can read it slowly - they can turn the pages back and so on - doesn't really work on TV because it interrupts the flow of the moving image.
-- Brian Greene

#Moving #Book #People

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

#Law #Acting #Bags

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

#Past #Illusion #Said

Most people don’t question the practice of eating meat. Many of these people care about animals and the environment, some deeply. But for some reason-force of habit, cultural norms, resistance to change-there is a fundamental disconnect whereby these feelings don’t translate into changes of behavior.
-- Brian Greene

#Animal #Practice #People

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

#Teacher #Answers #Best Teacher

Energy is the ultimate convertable currency.
-- Brian Greene

#Energy #Currency #Ultimate

Experimental evidence is the final arbiter of right and wrong.
-- Brian Greene

#Finals #Programming #Evidence

Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that's what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism - all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see.
-- Brian Greene

#Motivation #Inspiration #Curves

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

#Giving #Physics #Mathematical

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

#Cosmos #Eras #Spirit

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

#Understanding #Rich #Exciting

I’ve spent something like 17 years working on a theory for which there is essentially no direct experimental support.
-- Brian Greene

#Years #Support #Theory

Evidence in support of general relativity came quickly. Astronomers had long known that Mercury’s orbital motion around the sun deviated slightly from what Newton’s mathematics predicted. In 1915, Einstein used his new equations to recalculate Mercury’s trajectory and was able to explain the discrepancy, a realization he later described to his colleague Adrian Fokker as so thrilling that for some hours it gave him heart palpitations.
-- Brian Greene

#Heart #Long #Support

The revelation we've come to is that we can trust our memories of a past with lower, not higher, entropy only if the big bang - the process, event, or happening that brought the universe into existence - started off the universe in an extraordinarily special, highly ordered state of low entropy.
-- Brian Greene

#Memories #Past #Special

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.
-- Brian Greene

#Dream #Light #Age

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

#Sky #Space #Age

So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.
-- Brian Greene

#Moving #Reality #Space

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

#Real #Law #Choices

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

#Way #Universe

You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high entropy state.
-- Brian Greene

#Needs #States #Should

There are many of us thinking of one version of parallel universe theory or another. If it's all a lot of nonsense, then it's a lot of wasted effort going into this far-out idea. But if this idea is correct, it is a fantastic upheaval in our understanding.
-- Brian Greene

#Thinking #Ideas #Effort