UNIVERSE QUOTES IV

quotations about the Universe

Even atheistic scientists will wax lyrical about the scale, the majesty, the harmony, the elegance, the sheer ingenuity of the universe of which they form so small and fragile a part.... Science reveals that there is a coherent scheme of things, but scientists do not necessarily interpret that as evidence for meaning or purpose in the universe.

PAUL DAVIES

Cosmic Jackpot


The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, the mind itself being but a fact among others.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Blood Meridian

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

DOUGLAS ADAMS

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe


Only 4 percent of our universe is made of ordinary matter like atoms and molecules. The other 96 percent is in entirely unfamiliar forms we know almost nothing about.

LINDA B. GLASER

"Spring Hans Bethe Lecture to explore 'Dark Universe'", Cornell Chronicle, April 12, 2017


A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

STEPHEN CRANE

War Is Kind and Other Poems

Tags: Stephen Crane


The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry.

JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND

Gold-Foil

Tags: Josiah Gilbert Holland


Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

STEPHEN HAWKING

A Brief History of Time


The universe has no favourites; it is supremely just, and gives to every man his rightful earnings.

JAMES ALLEN

Byways of Blessedness

Tags: James Allen


The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


We see the universe as it is ... and these naked truths are cruel ones. We who believe in life, and treasure it, will die. Afterward there will be nothing, eternal emptiness, blackness, nonexistence. In our living there has been no purpose, no poetry, no meaning. Nor do our deaths possess these qualities. When we are gone, the universe will not long remember us, and shortly it will be as if we had never lived at all. Our worlds and our universe will not long outlive us. Ultimately entropy will consume all, and our puny efforts cannot stay that awful end.

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

"The Way of the Cross and Dragon"

Tags: George R. R. Martin


The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest.

MARC SCOTT ZICREE

"Survivors", Babylon 5


It is our station to live within laws that give us being, but offer of themselves no purpose or promise, no triumph as a species. The universe allows us a place in its systematic workings but only cares for the system itself, not us.

GREGORY BENFORD

"Starswarmer"

Tags: Gregory Benford


The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle -- another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn't matter what you look like, or what you're made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or later you'll find it. It's already here. It's inside everything. You don't have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.

CARL SAGAN

Contact: A Novel


We are not lords of the universe. We're one small part of it. We may be its consciousness, but being the consciousness of the universe does not mean turning it all into a mirror image of us. It means rather fitting into it as it is, and worshipping it with our attention.

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

Red Mars


The universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level. The novelty, the new, more complex order, doesn't emerge from the present in a steady stream, nor at all places at the same rate. It comes, as all things do, in rhythmic waves; there will always be times and places of scarcity and stagnation and retrogression. Still, the long-term direction is clear. The intention of the universe is evolution.

GEORGE LEONARD

The Silent Pulse

Tags: George Leonard


There comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.

DOUGLAS ADAMS

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong.

JAMES BRANCH CABELL

The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions

Tags: James Branch Cabell


The basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy that is malleable to human intention and expectation in a way that defies our old mechanistic model of the universe--as though our expectation itself causes our energy to flow out into the world and affect other energy systems.

JAMES REDFIELD

The Celestine Prophecy

Tags: James Redfield


What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

STEPHEN HAWKING

Der Spiegel, October 17, 1988


There is a universe out there, a universe of life, objects, and events. There are differences, but it is all the same universe, and we all must obey the same universal laws.

BARRY B. LONGYEAR

"Enemy Mine"