Brian Greene Quotes

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

~ Brian Greene

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

~ Brian Greene

Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.

~ Brian Greene

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

~ Brian Greene

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

~ 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

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

~ Brian Greene

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

... things are the way they are in our universe because if they Weren't, we would not be here to notice.

~ Brian Greene

We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the underdog pressing onward against seemingly insurmountable odds. We all, in one form or another, are trying to make sense of the world around us. And all of these elements lie at the core of modern physics. The story is among the grandest -- the unfolding of the entire universe; the mystery is among the toughest -- finding out how the cosmos came to be; the odds are among the most daunting -- bipeds, newly arrived by cosmic time scales trying to reveal the secrets of the ages; and the quest is among the deepest -- the search for fundamental laws to explain all we see and beyond, from the tiniest particles to the most distant galaxies.

~ Brian Greene

…The wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics.

~ Brian Greene

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

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

Relativity challenges your basic intuitions that you've built up from everyday experience. It says your experience of time is not what you think it is, that time is malleable. Your experience of space is not what you think it is; it can stretch and shrink.

~ Brian Greene

Every moment is as real as every other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'This is the real moment,' is as real as every other 'now' - and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.

~ Brian Greene

Black holes provide theoreticians with an important theoretical laboratory to test ideas. Conditions within a black hole are so extreme, that by analyzing aspects of black holes we see space and time in an exotic environment, one that has shed important, and sometimes perplexing, new light on their fundamental nature.

~ Brian Greene

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.

~ Brian Greene

One of the strangest features of string theory is that it requires more than the three spatial dimensions that we see directly in the world around us. That sounds like science fiction, but it is an indisputable outcome of the mathematics of string theory.

~ Brian Greene

Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.

~ Brian Greene

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

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

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

~ Brian Greene

My mom says: 'Why aren't you a doctor?' and I'm like, 'I am a doctor!' and she's all, 'No, I mean a real doctor.' She reads my books, but she says they give her a headache.

~ Brian Greene

When you drive your car, E = mc2 is at work. As the engine burns gasoline to produce energy in the form of motion, it does so by converting some of the gasoline's mass into energy, in accord with Einstein's formula.

~ 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

When you buy a jacket, you pick the size to ensure it fits. Similarly, we live in a universe in which the amount of dark energy fits our biological make-up. If the amount of dark energy were substantially different from what we've measured, the environmental conditions would be inhospitable to our form of life.

~ Brian Greene

My dad was a composer and a musician, but he never finished high school. His formal education was rather minimal from the standards of today's college graduates and Ph.D.'s, but he had a deep interest in questions of science and questions of the universe.

~ Brian Greene