I think the discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known particles would revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

Working out another system to replace Newton’s laws took a long time because phenomena at the atomic level were quite strange. One had to lose one’s common sense in order to perceive what was happening at the atomic level.

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

The same law takes place in a system, consisting of many bodies, as in one single body, with regard to their persevering in their state of motion or of rest. For the progressive motion, whether of one single body or of a whole system of bodies, is always to be estimated from the motion of the center of gravity.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

I am not enough of a mathematician to be able to judge either the well-foundedness or the limits of relativity in physics.

There are no black holes in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, with creative goodness and creative power, will always remain one of the most disturbing mysteries of the universe for both our hearts and our minds.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

You’re unlikely to discover something new without a lot of practice on old stuff, but further, you should get a heck of a lot of fun out of working out funny relations and interesting things.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.

Cosmology is a rapidly advancing field.

The first amazing fact about gravitation is that the ratio of inertial mass to gravitational mass is constant wherever we have checked it. The second amazing thing about gravitation is how weak it is.

I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.

All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energy content which is involved in gravitation, and therefore, since matter and antimatter both represent positive energies, gravitation makes no distinction.

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

Once you feel loved by the universe, you’re already accepted, and you’re not really concerned about offending people.

It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses.

If a projectile were deprived of the force of gravity, it would not be deflected toward the earth but would go off in a straight line into the heavens and do so with uniform motion, provided that the resistance of the air were removed.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

I’m someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

For years, my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science. It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin.

The profoundly ‚atomic‘ character of the universe is visible in everyday experience, in raindrops and grains of sand, in the hosts of the living, and the multitude of stars; even in the ashes of the dead.

Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

The Indians on board said that thence to Cuba was a voyage in their canoes of a day and a half; these being small dug-outs without a sail. Such are their canoes. I departed thence for Cuba, for by the signs the Indians made of its greatness, and of its gold and pearls, I thought that it must be Cipango.

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical.

God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.