52a093c
|
I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.
|
|
universe
true
love
|
Benjamin Alire Sáenz |
13e9b70
|
The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.
|
|
universe
magic
|
Ray Bradbury |
1b156b6
|
The universe is big, its vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that's the theory. Nine hundred years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.
|
|
pandorica-opens
universe
inspirational
miracles
doctor-who
|
Steven Moffat |
55a58be
|
That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged -- to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.
|
|
universe
|
Hermann Hesse |
629df3a
|
The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.
|
|
universe
seti
|
Carl Sagan |
3400d82
|
The universe doesn't give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions.
|
|
universe
thoughts
change
motivational
success
inspirational
actions
intent
|
Steve Maraboli |
f1857ec
|
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
|
|
universe
nature
life
|
Joseph Campbell |
fd338d1
|
" A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
|
|
universe
poetry
meaning
purpose
|
Stephen Crane |
5802cc4
|
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
|
|
universe
meaning
|
C.S. Lewis |
4701886
|
The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.
|
|
universe
time
love
infinity
paradox
forever
|
Craig Ferguson |
db0b006
|
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
|
|
universe
beauty
science
philosophy
cosmos
|
Carl Sagan |
d0ba96f
|
Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.
|
|
universe
|
Bill Bryson |
ae04872
|
The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
|
|
universe
history
dream
fantasy
adoration
expenses
lord-god
petulant
preposterous
prayers
homo-sapiens
ruler
industry
lord
evidence
flattery
creation
|
Robert A. Heinlein |
ca28a8d
|
The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
|
|
universe
life
cosmos
mystery
|
Carl Sagan |
b806e68
|
There's as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.
|
|
universe
stars
science
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
16cda58
|
The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.
|
|
universe
inspirational
stardust
|
Lawrence M. Krauss |
9abea30
|
"In 2002, having spent more than three years in one residence for the first time in my life, I got called for jury duty. I show up on time, ready to serve. When we get to the voir dire, the lawyer says to me, "I see you're an astrophysicist. What's that?" I answer, "Astrophysics is the laws of physics, applied to the universe--the Big Bang, black holes, that sort of thing." Then he asks, "What do you teach at Princeton?" and I say, "I teach a class on the evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony." Five minutes later, I'm on the street. A few years later, jury duty again. The judge states that the defendant is charged with possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine. It was found on his body, he was arrested, and he is now on trial. This time, after the Q&A is over, the judge asks us whether there are any questions we'd like to ask the court, and I say, "Yes, Your Honor. Why did you say he was in possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine? That equals 1.7 grams. The 'thousand' cancels with the 'milli-' and you get 1.7 grams, which is less than the weight of a dime." Again I'm out on the street."
|
|
universe
science
eyewitness
jury-duty
voir-dire
astrophysics
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
44521e0
|
And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.
|
|
universe
hope
lestat
rescue
safety
|
Anne Rice |
cceb7d2
|
We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.
|
|
universe
life
inspirational
cosmos
consciousness
|
Brian Cox |
479217e
|
All the world's a stage.
|
|
theatre
universe
world
humanity
philosophy
stage
|
William Shakespeare |
e65cd8b
|
She who saves a single soul, saves the universe.
|
|
universe
saves
cheshire
single
wonderland
cat
soul
|
Lewis Carroll |
5b2185a
|
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
|
|
universe
science
life
biology
humans
|
Bill Bryson |
25d011a
|
And if I'm alone in bed, I will go to the window, look up at the sky, and feel certain that loneliness is a lie, because the Universe is there to keep me company.
|
|
universe
loneliness
|
Paulo Coelho |
583bd53
|
"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean
|
|
universe
nature
death
good-health
look
|
Walt Whitman |
9ca1fb7
|
"...he asked, "Where are you today, right now?" Eagerly, I started talking about myself. However, I noticed that I was still being sidetracked from getting answers to my questions. Still, I told him about my distant and recent past and about my inexplicable depressions. He listened patiently and intently, as if he had all the time in the world, until I finished several hours later. "Very well," he said. "But you still have not answered my question about where you are." "Yes I did, remember? I told you how I got to where I am today: by hard work." "Where are you?" "What do you mean, where am I?" "Where Are you?" he repeated softly. "I'm here." "Where is here?" "In this office, in this gas station!" I was getting impatient with this game. "Where is this gas station?" "In Berkeley?" "Where is Berkeley?" "In California?" "Where is California?" "In the United States?" "On a landmass, one of the continents in the Western Hemisphere. Socrates, I..." "Where are the continents? I sighed. "On the earth. Are we done yet?" "Where is the earth?" "In the solar system, third planet from the sun. The sun is a small star in the Milky Way galaxy, all right?" "Where is the Milky Way?" "Oh, brother, " I sighed impatiently, rolling my eyes. "In the universe." I sat back and crossed my arms with finality. "And where," Socrates smiled, "is the universe?" "The universe is well, there are theories about how it's shaped..." "That's not what I asked. Where is it?" "I don't know - how can I answer that?" "That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of What anything is or how is came to be. Life is a mystery. "My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass."
|
|
universe
philosophy
listening
mystery
|
Dan Millman |
a5af16f
|
Soft hearts make the universe worth living in.
|
|
universe
heart
love
girl
cute
|
Veronica Roth |
560b6bc
|
"He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced."
|
|
universe
madness
|
Douglas Adams |
5fd3589
|
The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
|
|
universe
science
misattributed-arthur-c-clarke
physics
|
J.B.S. Haldane |
b9c6c18
|
"The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. (from "Rediscovering Lost Values")" --
|
|
universe
morals
physics
values
|
Martin Luther King Jr. |
678f7e8
|
We had a kettle; we let it leak: Our not repairing made it worse. We haven't had any tea for a week... The bottom is out of the Universe.
|
|
universe
world
repair
tea
|
Rudyard Kipling |
23840d8
|
Nothing would be easier without you, because you are everything, all of it- sprinkles, quarks, giant donuts, eggs sunny-side up- you are the ever-expanding universe to me.
|
|
universe
poetry
|
Kate DiCamillo |
ebdc401
|
But I do know we're deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.
|
|
loving-relationship
universe
satisfaction
life
truth
materialism
|
Mitch Albom |
86e6964
|
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.
|
|
universe
science
special
superstition
|
Charles Darwin |
0d84296
|
"I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker," he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything."
|
|
universe
religion
science
god
intelligence
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
1e8ff8e
|
We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our own explanation of the universe. We think that the more people there are who believe as we do, the more certain it will be that what we believe is the truth. But it doesn't work that way at all.
|
|
universe
truth
common-sense
way-of-life
|
Paulo Coelho |
064f0f3
|
Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.
|
|
universe
stars
death
science
gravestone
science-fiction
|
Clifford D. Simak |
f7f1a8e
|
Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call 'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise. I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.
|
|
universe
mind
nature
spirit
religion
science
life
behaviorism
behaviorists
first-cause
ivan-pavlov
ivan-petrovich-pavlov
john-b-watson
john-broadus-watson
stimuli
john-watson
pavlov
cosmology
astronomy
watson
goal
environment
determinism
ethics
theology
dogma
materialism
naturalism
consciousness
science-and-religion
life-after-death
physics
psychology
|
Nikola Tesla |
f73bd1d
|
The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
|
|
universe
people
love
|
J.D. Salinger |
3a0b0d0
|
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues -- every stately or lovely emblazoning -- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge -- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
|
|
universe
whiteness
terrorism
terror
|
Herman Melville |
6a33b4b
|
While the Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, it's worked quite well so far: not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system, but the solar system is not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy is not in the center of the universe, and it may come to pass that our universe is just one of many that comprise a multiverse. And in case you're one of those people who thinks that the edge may be a special place, we are not at the edge of anything either.
|
|
universe
science
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
08a5df9
|
You're probably wondering: why were Medusa's kids a golden warrior and a winged horse? And how had they been stuck in Medusa's body all those years?Heck, I dunno. I'm just telling you how it was. You want stuff to make sense, you're in the wrong universe
|
|
universe
funny
percy-jackson-s-greek-heroes
pj
pjo
greek-heroes
greek
medusa
percabeth
percy-jackson
rick-riordan
|
Rick Riordan |
77bea6f
|
The universe, they say, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness.
|
|
universe
world
pratchett
forces
|
Terry Pratchett |
203976c
|
Words are really a mask,' he said. 'They rarely express the true meaning; in fact they tend to hide it. If you can live in fantasy, then you don't need religion, since with fantasy you can understand that after death, man is reincorporated in the Universe. Once again I will say that it is not important to know whether there is something beyond this life. What counts is having done the right sort of work; if that is right, then everything else will be all right. The Universe, or Nature, is for me what God is for others. It is wrong to think that Nature is the enemy of man, something to be conquered. Rather, we should look upon Nature as a mother, and should peaceably surrender ourselves to it. If we take that attitude, we will simply feel that we are returning to the Universe as all other things do, all animals and plants. We are all just infinitesimal parts of the Whole. It is absurd to rebel; we must deliver ourselves up to the great current....
|
|
universe
|
Miguel Serrano |
2730f9b
|
The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.
|
|
universe
humanism
justice
|
Roger Zelazny |
aae6299
|
...things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren't, we wouldn't be here to notice.
|
|
universe
science
|
Brian Greene |
576d8c9
|
You want fantasy? Here's one... There's this species that lives on a planet a few miles above molten rock and a few miles below a vacuum that'd suck the air right out of them. They live in a brief geological period between ice ages, when giant asteroids have temporarily stopped smacking into the surface. As far as they can tell, there's nowhere else in the universe where they could stay alive for ten seconds. And what do they call their fragile little slice of space and time? They call it real life.
|
|
universe
humour
humanity
science
realism
|
Terry Pratchett |
c846367
|
As long as there is one person suffering an injustice; as long as one person is forced to bear an unnecessary sorrow; as long as one person is subject to an undeserved pain, the worship of a God is a demoralizing humiliation. As long as there is one mistake in the universe; as long as one wrong is permitted to exist; as long as there is hatred and antagonism among mankind, the existence of a God is a moral impossibility. said: 'Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible.
|
|
mankind
hatred
universe
injustice
earth
pain
suffering
wrong
sorrow
morality
ingersoll
robert-g-ingersoll
robert-green-ingersoll
robert-ingersoll
impossibility
mistake
justice
|
Joseph Lewis |
00635ff
|
It is very important to a lot of people to make unmistakably clear to themselves and to the universe that they love the universe but are not intimidated by it and will not be shaken by it, no matter what it has in store. Moreover, they demand something from themselves early in life that can be taken ever after as a demonstration of this abiding feeling.
|
|
universe
love
|
Norman Maclean |
fa307db
|
We are both astonishments, the closest thing in the known universe to a miracle
|
|
miracle
universe
john-green
turtles-all-the-way-down
|
John Green |
7ee8b2b
|
"Totus mundus agit histrionem. " [Motto of William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (f. 1599) and its acting company, The King's Men; taken from the first play to be performed on the new stage.]"
|
|
universe
world
stage
|
William Shakespeare |
f7b16ce
|
The choices we're working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can't know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it's all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway.
|
|
present
universe
future
free-will
past
god
life
choices
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
1ac29f7
|
And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks
|
|
universe
existence
life
fairness
|
Tom Robbins |
2b709c2
|
"Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came to being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old. These dates are incorrect. Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760BC. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508BC. These suggestions are also incorrect. Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.
|
|
universe
science
creationism
genesis
creation
|
Terry Pratchett |
699ed8a
|
Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite 'telescope envy' at gatherings of amateur astronomers.
|
|
universe
neil-degrasse-tyson
telescope
physics
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
96f3242
|
Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.
|
|
universe
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
2b4e68a
|
There were only the great diamonds and sapphires and emerald mists and velvet inks of space, with God's voice mingling among the crystal fires.
|
|
universe
beauty
god
kaleidoscope
jewels
outer-space
colours
|
Ray Bradbury |
0cf2992
|
"You would hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any moderately penetrating mind--monsters to which those of the oceans bear no sort of comparison." What monsters may they be?" Impersonal monsters, namely, Immensities. Until a person has thought out the stars and their inter-spaces, he has hardly learnt that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape, namely, monsters of magnitude without known shape. Such monsters are the voids and waste places of the sky... In these our sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited. Those deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary abysses to right and left as you pass on!... There is a size at which dignity begins," he exclaimed; "further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins. That size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. So am I not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror?"
|
|
universe
science
cosmic
size
horror
monsters
|
Thomas Hardy |
bfb42c6
|
I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.
|
|
universe
death
religion
life
cosmic-sadist
theology
everything
|
Charles Stross |
106543c
|
It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can.
|
|
universe
inspirational
|
Bill Bryson |
c59ac63
|
Rather than feeling lost and unimportant and meaningless, set against galaxies which go beyond the reach of the furthest telescopes, I feel that my life has meaning. Perhaps I should feel insignificant, but instead I feel a soaring in my heart that the God who could create all this -- and out of nothing -- can still count the hairs of my head.
|
|
universe
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
975c7aa
|
The universe is a big place. Maybe we're not in the best neighborhood.
|
|
universe
neighborhood
big
place
|
John Scalzi |
d4c5590
|
"You know how it goes: at some point in your life, you fell in love with someone and had a glimpse of God. Then you abandoned life and lover
|
|
lover
universe
worship
jesus
spirituality
religion
god
spiritual
life
love
divinity
in-love
divine
christ
celebrate
celebrating
celebration
glimpse
goes
kamand
kamand-kojouri
know
kojouri
love-is-love
love-movement
love-revolution
love-wins
point
someone
sufi
sufism
worshipping
rumi
hafiz
hafez
beloved
|
Kamand Kojouri |
ebd74b3
|
A man craves ultimate truths. Every mortal mind, I think, is that way. But what is ultimate truth? It's the end of the road, where there is no more mystery, no more hope. And no more questions to ask, since all the answers have been given. But there is no such place. The Universe is a labyrinth made of labyrinths. Each leads to another. And wherever we cannot go ourselves, we reach with mathematics. Out of mathematics we build wagons to carry us into the nonhuman realms of the world.
|
|
universe
science
truth
|
Stanisław Lem |
efaee35
|
"In an infinite Universe anything can happen," said Ford, "Even survival. Strange but true."
|
|
universe
survival
strange
|
Douglas Adams |
36ea3b6
|
The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die--it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives.
|
|
universe
|
Annie Dillard |
8be3468
|
The stars, like dust, encircle me In living mists of light; And all of space I seem to see In one vast burst of sight
|
|
universe
space
|
Isaac Asimov |
03e5080
|
With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.
|
|
universe
life
purpose
|
Orson Scott Card |
aa6f23d
|
The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. 'If I am the wisest man,' said Socrates, 'it is because I alone know that I know nothing.' The implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal. Alas, none of this was new to me. (There is very little that is new to me; I wish my correspondents would realize this.) This particular theme was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who specialized in irritating me. He also told me that all theories are proven wrong in time. My answer to him was, 'John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
|
|
understanding
universe
earth
wrong
theory
science
wisdom
flat-earth
scientific-theory
socrates
relativity
ignorance
knowledge
greece
|
Isaac Asimov |
088bfe6
|
The dark sky. A hundred million stars. More stars than I've ever seen before. My eyes let me see farther, but they don't show me the one thing I want to see. I would trade all the stars in the universe if I could just have him back again. Wind whistles through the trees nearby. Birdsong weaves in and out of the sound. The hybrids emerge from the communication building, heads tilted to the sky. And then we see the end. Godspeed's engine was nuclear; who knows what fueled the biological weapons. But they explode together. In space, they don't make the familiar mushroom cloud. They don't make the boom! of an exploding bomb. There is, against the dark sky, a brief flash of light. It is filled with colors, like a nebula or the aurora borealis, bursting like a popped bubble. Nothing else--no sound of an explosion, no tremors in the earth, no smell of smoke. Not here, on the surface of the planet. Nothing else to signify Elder's death. Just light. And then it's gone. And then he's gone.
|
|
universe
stars
death
aurora
nebula
elder
atu-series
shades-of-earth
burst
galaxy
sky
gone
dead
lost
|
Beth Revis |
7e08da2
|
She thought that trying to live life according to any plan you actually work out is like trying to buy ingredients for a recipe from the supermarket. You get one of those trolleys which simply will not go in the direction you push it and end up just having to buy completely different stuff. What do you do with it? What do you do with the recipe? She didn't know.
|
|
universe
life
trillian
|
Douglas Adams |
6e62783
|
I am talking to you, but the moment I am talking to you, the universe is being created and destroyed.
|
|
universe
time
|
Paulo Coelho |
1ba8ec3
|
Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.
|
|
universe
science
cosmos
nasa
space
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
c654490
|
A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.
|
|
universe
volunteer
survive
|
Norman Maclean |
dd11fc5
|
He was clearly used to sucking in the universe, examining it, then bending it to his will.
|
|
universe
surrender-to-me
|
Shayla Black |
776fc5a
|
The sentiment may perceive and love the universe, but the universe cannot perceive and love the sentiment. The universe sees no distinction between the multitude of creatures and elements which comprise it. All are equal. None is favoured. The universe, equipped with nothing but the materials and the power of creation, continues to create: something of this, something of that. It cannot control what it creates and it cannot, it seems, be controlled by its creations (though a few might deceive themselves otherwise). Those who curse the workings of the universe curse that which is deaf. Those who strike out at those workings fight that which is inviolate. Those who shake their fists, shake their fists at blind stars.
|
|
universe
stars
love
|
Michael Moorcock |
01e067f
|
A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath.
|
|
universe
thoughful
reflection
|
Terry Pratchett |
c3bd5de
|
"We are focus-points of consciousness, [...] enormously creative. When we enter the self-constructed hologrammetric arena we call spacetime, we begin at once to generate creativity particles, imajons, in violent continuous pyrotechnic deluge. Imajons have no charge of their own but are strongly polarized through our attitudes and by the force of our choice and desire into clouds of conceptons, a family of very-high-energy particles which may be positive, negative or neutral. [...] Some common positive conceptions are exhilarons, excytons, rhapsodons, jovions. Common negative conceptions include gloomons, tormentons, tribulons, agonons, miserons. "Indefinite numbers of conceptions are created in nonstop eruption, a thundering cascade of creativity pouring from every center of personal consciousness. They mushroom into conception clouds, which can be neutral or strongly charged - buoyant, weightless or leaden, depending on the nature of their dominant particles. "Every nanosecond an indefinite number of conception clouds build to critical mass, then transform in quantum bursts to high-energy probability waves radiating at tachyon speeds through an eternal reservoir of supersaturated alternate events. Depending on their charge and nature, the probability waves crystallize certain of these potential events to match the mental polarity of their creating consciousness into holographic appearance. [...] "The materialized events become that mind's experience, freighted with all the aspects of physical structure necessary to make them real and learningful to the creating consciousness. This autonomic process is the fountain from which springs every object and event in the theater of spacetime. "The persuasion of the imajon hypothesis lies in its capacity for personal verification. The hypothesis predicts that as we focus our conscious intention on the positive and life-affirming, as we fasten our thought on these values, we polarize masses of positive conceptions, realize beneficial probability-waves, bring useful alternate events to us that otherwise would not have appeared to exist. "The reverse is true in the production of negative events, as is the mediocre in-between. Through default or intention, unaware or by design, we not only choose but create the visible outer conditions that are most resonant to our inner state of being [...]"
|
|
universe
positive-thinking
|
Richard Bach |
3282968
|
A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe, or even with the ways of society. Let the unfortunates rail; the others may play marbles.
|
|
universe
society
|
Stephen Crane |
25f63f9
|
The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock--more than a maple--universe.
|
|
universe
beauty
spirituality
|
Annie Dillard |
4d7f0fd
|
Charles Wallace and the unicorn moved through the time-spinning reaches of a far glazy, and he realized that the galaxy itself was part of a mighty orchestra, and each star and planet within the galaxy added its own instrument to the music of the spheres. As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy.
|
|
universe
stars
joy
music
musical-instrument
orchestra
planet
singing
harmony
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
486c8b1
|
"Why can't people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?" said Arthur. Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh. "Forty-two!" he said with a malicious grin. "No, doesn't work. Never mind." --
|
|
universe
humour
life
ultimate-question
|
Douglas Adams |
4a524a8
|
I personally think humans have got about as far as we can go. We're wrecking the planet. We're never short of good reasons to massacre each other. Wrong god. Wrong race. Wrong color. Wrong sex. I'm actually quite surprised a thoroughly pissed-off History hasn't waved a flaming sword and we're all back in caves in the snow, chewing on half-cooked mammoth. And even that's more than we deserve. No wonder we still can't get to Mars. I suspect the Universe is making damned sure we don't get the chance to contaminate other planets with our stupidity. It's keeping us on this one where the only thing we can damage is each other.
|
|
universe
stupidity
|
Jodi Taylor |
d24a683
|
I'm going to go pee. If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it's best to meet it with an empty bladder.
|
|
universe
bigger
bladder
pee
empty
imagine
stranger
meet
|
John Scalzi |
1bac605
|
In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree.
|
|
universe
wonder
science
life
extraterrestrial-life
|
Richard Dawkins |
2398d45
|
There is no pattern the human mind can devise that does not exist already within the bounds of nature...Everything we do, see, write, notate, all are an echo of the deep seams of the universe. Music is the invisible world made visible through sound.
|
|
universe
|
Kate Mosse |
4a4c65a
|
Everything's different from us. That's why everything exists.
|
|
universe
seeing
existence
meaning
reality
god
life
love
truth
pantheism
clarity
paganism
being
|
Alberto Caeiro |
862cfd9
|
They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past and go into the never-ending future, waiting themselves for death, at the foot of the dead, in a holy temple. - I get a vision of myself and the two little boys hung up in a great endless universe with nothing overhead and nothing under bbut the Infinite Nothingness, the Enormousness of it, the dead without number in all directions of existence whether inward into the atom-worlds of your own body or outward to the universe which may only be one atom in an infinity of atom-worlds and each atom-world only a figure of speech - inward, outward, up and down, nothing but emptiness and divine majesty and silence for the two little boys and me.
|
|
universe
dying
|
Jack Kerouac |
a0000f2
|
Mostly I think I've learned to trust God more. I mean, if I start getting worried or freaked, I just try to put it in God's hands. Sometimes I imagine God cradling the globe in his hands, and I tell myself that as long as I'm with God, the Creator of the universe, I can be comfortable and at home anyplace on the planet.
|
|
universe
trust
worried
globe
|
Melody Carlson |
42a9b13
|
"The ocean was back in the pond, and the only knowledge I was left with, as if I had woken from a dream on a summer's day, was that it had not been long ago since I had known everything. I looked at Lettie in the moonlight. "Is that how it is for you? I asked. "Is what how it is for me?" "Do you still know everything, all the time?" ...She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play." "To play what?" "This," she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and the shawls and clusters of bright stars."
|
|
universe
reality
spiritual
|
Neil Gaiman |
49ccad1
|
Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all. No judgment implied. Just an observation.
|
|
universe
science
cosmos
space
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
12f9b93
|
It's okay if there isn't a God anymore, but I still want to respect something. I don't want to be the center of my own universe,
|
|
universe
self-centered
inspriational
|
Chuck Palahniuk |
d560208
|
"Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: 'This is it. This is it'"."
|
|
universe
religion
science-fiction
|
Alan Lightman |
20d5532
|
As I lay there, listening to the soft slap of the sea, and thinking these sad and strange thoughts, more and more and more stars had gathered, obliterating the separateness of the Milky Way and filling up the whole sky. And far far away in that ocean of gold, stars were silently shooting and falling and finding their fates, among these billions and billions of merging golden lights. And curtain after curtain of gauze was quietly removed, and I saw stars behind stars behind stars, as in the magical Odeons of my youth. And I saw into the vast soft interior of the universe which was slowly and gently turning itself inside out. I went to sleep, and in my sleep I seemed to hear a sound of singing.
|
|
universe
stars
milky-way
the-sea-the-sea
iris-murdoch
galaxy
descriptive
magical
description
|
Iris Murdoch |
6cc6586
|
Time is a random thing. It is the thing that makes us older. Humans use it to organize the world. They have invented a system to try to make order from randomness. The other humans, all of them but me, live their lives by hours and minutes and days and seconds, but those things are nothing. The universe would laugh at our attempts to organize it, if it could be bothered to notice them. Time is the thing that makes our bodies shrivel and decay. That is why people are scared of it.
|
|
universe
time
|
Emily Barr |
c50e984
|
Man is the universe becoming conscious of itself.
|
|
universe
|
Greg Iles |
cdeeaa0
|
The universe is math on fire.
|
|
universe
theory
numbers
fire
math
|
Scott Westerfeld |
ea8387d
|
... pain has been with him since birth - the universe's gift to a poet ...
|
|
universe
pain
|
Dan Simmons |
8f81b22
|
We saw the same sunset.
|
|
universe
unity
life
|
S.E. Hinton |
ea99137
|
After our negotiations were completed, the dome would be imploded and launched toward the nearest black hole, so that none of its atoms would ever contaminate this particular universe again. I thought that last part was overkill.
|
|
universe
completed
contaminate
dome
imploded
launched
overkill
negotiations
particular
hole
black
|
John Scalzi |
b085eea
|
I look forward to the day when the solar system becomes our collective backyard--explored not only with robots, but with the mind, body, and soul of our species.
|
|
universe
science
cosmos
space
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
e7b9ce5
|
The universe isn't going to be conquered by legions of geriatrics. No offense.
|
|
universe
geriatrics
legions
offense
|
John Scalzi |
246955b
|
We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods.
|
|
universe
religion
|
Brian Herbert |
da08198
|
"If the multiverse turns out to be the best explanation of the fundamental physical constants, it would not be the first time we have been flabbergasted by worlds beyond our noses. Our ancestors had to swallow the discovery of the Western Hemisphere, eight other planets, a hundred billion stars in our galaxy (many with planets), and a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. If reason contradicts intuition once again, so much the worse for intuition. Another advocate of the multiverse, Brian Greene, reminds us: "From a quaint, small, earth-centered universe to one filled with billions of galaxies, the journey has been both thrilling and humbling. We've been compelled to relinquish sacred belief in our own centrality, but with such cosmic demotion we've demonstrated the capacity of the human intellect to reach far beyond the confines of ordinary experience to reveal extraordinary truth." --
|
|
universe
multiverse
|
Steven Pinker |
e37a3e6
|
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
|
|
universe
|
Richard Dawkins |
005feed
|
"The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have a choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe it was inevitable from all eternity.'
|
|
universe
insightful
|
W. Somerset Maugham |
2ade1f3
|
That--this--is Orion's secret. It's not that the ship isn't working, that we're never going to make it. It's that the ship has already arrived. We're already here! There--there--is the planet that will be our home! It floats, so bright that it hurts my eyes. Giant green landmasses spread out across blue water, with swirls and wisps of clouds twirling over top. At the edge of the planet, where it turns away from the suns and starts to darken, I can see bright flashes of light--bursts of whiteness in the darkness--and I think: Is that lightning? In the center, where the light of the suns makes the planet seem to glow from within, I can see, very distinctly, a continent. A continent. On one edge, it's cracked and broken like an egg, dark lines snaking deep into the landmass. Rivers. Lots of them. Maybe something too big to be rivers if I can see it from here. Fingers of land stretch out into the sea, and dots of islands are just out of their grasp. That area will be cool all the time, I think. Boats can go along the rivers, up and down. We can swim in the water. Because already, I can see myself living there. Being there. On a planet that looks up at a million suns every night, and at two every day. I want to scream, shout with joy. But the air is so thin now. Too thin. I've spent too long looking at Orion's secret. The boop . . . boop . . . boop . . . fades away. There's nothing to warn about now. Because there's no air left. My sight is rimmed with black. My head pulses with my heartbeat, which sounds as loud to me as the alarm once did. I turn from the planet--my planet--and start pulling, hand over hand, against the tether, toward the hatch. The ship bobs in and out of my vision as my whole body jerks. I'm panicked now and fighting to stay awake. I try to suck in air, but there's nothing there to suck. I'm drowning in nothing.
|
|
universe
stars
air
across-the-universe
elder
atu-series
orion
galaxy
|
Beth Revis |
3d41af0
|
We do not just belong to this universe, we are it.
|
|
universe
|
Greg Iles |
a8cbcc3
|
Are your goals backed by burning desire or are you giving the Universe mixed signals?
|
|
universe
mixed-signals
giving
seek
goals
|
Azim Jamal & Brian Tracy |
457ee95
|
Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not percieve.
|
|
universe
world-war-2
|
Philip K. Dick |
f1710e2
|
This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who took exactly the opposite view. To them, the only purpose of the Universe was the production of intelligence, and they were apt to talk sneeringly about purely astronomical phenomena, 'Mere dead matter' was one of their favourite phrases.
|
|
universe
intelligence
biology
exobiology
matter
dead
|
Arthur C. Clarke |
e737cb1
|
I smelled silt on the wind, turkey, laundry, leaves . . . my God what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it (267).
|
|
universe
wonder
page
|
Annie Dillard |
ef74bb9
|
They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.
|
|
universe
good
god
galaxy
space
sun
race
justice
evil
|
Arthur C. Clarke |
c1b7391
|
Life is a cosmic grab-bag. At this moment, somewhere in the world, someone is losing a child, skiing down a mountain, having an orgasm, getting a haircut, lying on a bed of pain, singing on a stage, drowning, getting married, starving in a gutter. In the end, aren't we all that same person? An aeon is a thousand million years, and an aeon ago every atom in our bodies was a part of a star. Pay attention to me, God. We are all a part of your universe, and if we die, part of your universe dies with us.
|
|
universe
god
|
Sidney Sheldon |
80630a3
|
Love was as hardwired into the structure of the universe as gravity and matter.
|
|
universe
|
Dan Simmons |
7b53a4a
|
"Inflation is continuous and eternal, with big bangs happening all the time, with universes sprouting from other universes. In this picture, universes can "bud" off into other universes, creating a "multiverse." In this theory, spontaneous breaking may occur anywhere within our universe, allowing an entire universe to bud off our universe. It also means that our own universe might have budded from a previous universe. In the chaotic inflationary model, the multiverse is eternal, even if individual universes are not. Some universes may have a very large Omega, in which case they immediately vanish into a big crunch after their big bang. Some universes only have a tiny Omega and expand forever. Eventually, the multiverse becomes dominated by those universes that inflate by a huge amount. In retrospect, the idea of parallel universes is forced upon us."
|
|
universe
omega
parallel-universes
multiverse
|
Michio Kaku |
5294d80
|
"She's leaving me!" "Leaving? She's been waiting for you to get your shit together." I step into him. "That Hunter bastard is offering her the world! What do I got to give? Nothing. I've got nothing." Isaiah slams his finger into my biceps. "She looks at you like you're the whole universe! I'd kill to have a sliver with Beth of what you have with Echo. Wake the f*ck up!" I pound my hand to my chest, mimicking the pain slicing it. "Echo's leaving me." "No, man. You're the one leaving her," he seethes. "Get it together or she will walk."
|
|
universe
world
noah-hutchins
offer
isaiah
leaving
|
Katie McGarry |
55558da
|
The totally alive, totally conscious, and totally aware Universe takes care of itself completely. It is totally self-reliant and totally self- sufficient. it is perfect.
|
|
universe
reading
inspiration
inspire
passages-treatment
conscious-awareness
holistic-health
passages-rehab
passages-ventura
passages-malibu
consciousness
quotes
|
Chris Prentiss |
b17dd81
|
You have chosen to exist, and more than just exist-- you've been chosen to share in the Universal consciousness.
|
|
universe
inspiration
life
passages-ventura
passages-malibu
chris-prentiss
|
Chris Prentiss |
c526033
|
Oh, death in space was most humorous.
|
|
universe
the-illustrated-man
|
Ray Bradbury |
f023c40
|
"In the long run, you see, none of that matters.
|
|
universe
planetary
|
Warren Ellis |
b3a959e
|
I would use the same word to describe both my joy and the rain: torrential. This--this--this is all I ever wanted from the world: wide-open spaces and cooling rain and the chance to run.
|
|
universe
stars
rain
cooling
torrential
amy-martin
atu-series
shades-of-earth
open
run
space
|
Beth Revis |
4fb0cd2
|
"There is in certain ancient things a trace Of some dim essence -- More than form or weight; A tenuous aether, indeterminate, Yet linked with all the laws of time and space. A faint, veiled sign of continuities That outward eyes can never quite descry;
|
|
universe
reality
truth
|
H.P. Lovecraft |
8be50a8
|
I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars. A million suns. Centuries away is Sol. Circling around it is Sol-Earth, the planet Amy came from. And one of these other stars is the Centauri binary system, where the new planet spins, waiting for us. And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars. Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home. But all of them are out of reach.
|
|
universe
earth
stars
emotion
across-the-universe
choking
elder
out-of-reach
sea-of-stars
unreachable
atu-series
awe
amy
galaxy
planets
home
terror
|
Beth Revis |
2b30b9d
|
Believe that is cure is possible for you. Discover and heal the underlying causes with a holistic recovery program. Adopt a philosophy based on what is true in the Universe.
|
|
universe
sobriety
freedom
inspiration
inspire
change
happiness
life
philosophy
wisdom
good-books
alcohol-addiction-treatment
curing-addiction
drug-addiction-treatment
recommended-reading
renew
sober-living
treatment-program
holistic-treatment
addiction-free
non12step
holistic-health
non-12-step
passages-ventura
passages-malibu
addiction-cure
addiction-treatment-center
chris-prentiss
sober
healing
change-the-world
health
self-improvement
self-help
|
Chris Prentiss |
d24600f
|
Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be so.
|
|
universe
earth
dejah-thoris
john-carter
night
|
Edgar Rice Burroughs |
18555b7
|
Our ancestors said to their mother Earth: 'We are yours'. Modern Humanity said to Nature, 'You are mine'. The Green Man has returned as the living face of the whole earth so that through his mouth we may say to the universe: 'We are one'.
|
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universe
earth
nature
humanity
green-man
mother-earth
cosmos
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Sharon Brubaker |
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Ni panteizma, ni gumanizma. No nechto gorazdo bolee ob'emnoe, bezrazlichnoe i nepostizhimoe. Eta real'nost' prebyvala v vechnom vzaimodeistvii. Ne dobro i ne zlo; ne krasota i ne bezobrazie. Ni vlecheniia ni nepriiazni. Tol'ko vzaimodeistvie.
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universe
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John Fowles |
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Mother's Eden: Does your Matthew... Well, does he make you feel as if he just handed you a handful of Stars? Eden: He make me feel as if he handed me the moon as well, Mama. Maybe the whole universe.
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universe
stars
handful
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Catherine Anderson |
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The universe is an amazingly fickle and eventful place, and our existence within is a wonder.
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universe
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Bill Bryson |
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The universe does not reveal itself to undergraduates or fools: This is the entire premise of higher education.
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universe
enlightenment
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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It could be that God has absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem.
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understanding
universe
god
life
believe
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Annie Dillard |
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Maybe somewhere telepaths walked the Earth, but I wasn't one of them. In the process, I began to realize that the wondrous exploits of telepaths were probably impossible--at least without outside assistance. But in the years that followed, I also slowly learned another lesson: to fathom the greatest secrets in the universe, one did not need telepathic or superhuman abilities. One just had to have an open, determined, and curious mind. In particular, in order to understand whether the fantastic devices of science fiction are possible, you have to immerse yourself in advanced physics. To understand the precise point when the possible becomes the impossible, you have to appreciate and understand the laws of physics.
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universe
physics
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Michio Kaku |
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If the universe is movement, it will not be in one direction only. We think of our lives as linear but it is the spin of the earth that allows us to observe time. Walk with me.
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universe
time
observe
movement
physics
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Jeanette Winterson |
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"If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither "declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs," then clearly I had better be scrying the signs." --
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universe
world
religion
philosophy
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Annie Dillard |
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"The word Universe is made up of two Latin words- uni (meaning "one") and versus (meaning "turned into"). It literally means "one turned into."
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universe
life
metaphysics
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Chris Prentiss |
780c30c
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The big question in cosmology in the early 1960s was did the universe have a beginning? Many scientists were instinctively opposed to the idea, because they felt that a point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God to determine how the universe would start off. This was clearly a fundamental question, and it was just what I needed to complete my PhD thesis. Roger Penrose had shown that once a dying star had contracted to a certain radius, there would inevitably be a singularity, that is a point where space and time came to an end. Surely, I thought, we already knew that nothing could prevent a massive cold star from collapsing under its own gravity until it reached a singularity of infinite density. I realised that similar arguments could be applied to the expansion of the universe. In this case, I could prove there were singularities where space-time had a beginning. A eureka moment came in 1970, a few days after the birth of my daughter, Lucy. While getting into bed one evening, which my disability made a slow process, I realised that I could apply to black holes the casual structure theory I had developed for singularity theorems. If general relativity is correct and the energy density is positive, the surface area of the event horizon--the boundary of a black hole--has the property that it always increases when additional matter or radiation falls into it. Moreover, if two black holes collide and merge to form a single black hole, the area of the event horizon around the resulting black hole is greater than the sum of the areas of the event horizons around the original black holes.
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universe
theory-of-general-relativity
physics
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Stephen Hawking |
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Wait a minute, even I've hearda him. He died savin' the entire universe. Choked on cum...
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universe
superheroes
saving-the-world
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Garth Ennis |
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Fiecare bataie de inima omeneasca, este un univers de posibilitati.
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universe
life
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Gregory David Roberts |
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However, this is too harmonious, grand, and overwhelming a universe to believe it all on accident.
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universe
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Mitch Albom |
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I sailed upon oceans, and I thought no challenge could be greater, and now men sail the void between stars. Oh, how I remember them. The constellations burning so bright at night. How could I ever have known? God's creation has a majesty which lays men bare at his feet.
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universe
stars
space
space-exploration
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Peter F. Hamilton |
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"Isn't the universe full of gaseous elements?" Andrew says, "Yeah, there are gases and neutrinos and this shit they call dark matter."
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universe
gaseous-elements
neutrinos
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Michael Cunningham |
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Mesa, adorno de marfil, arcoiris, cebolla, peinado, molusco, Sabbat, violencia, cuticula, melodrama, cuneta, miel, panuelo... Nada la conmovia. (...) Nada conseguia ser mas de lo que era en realidad. Eran solo cosas, prisioneras de su propia esencia.
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universe
intelligence
things
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Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad stars and upon billowing oceans and tossing trees--and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about?
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universe
wonder
multiverse
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Walter Isaacson |
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In this universe where I knew now we were not the center, where I was as insignificant and unremarkable as a grain of salt seen from a tower, God still allowed me to take my next breath.
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universe
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Susan Vreeland |