It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal.

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

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.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

Gravitation is, so far, not understandable in terms of other phenomena.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.

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.

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

By staying focused on what I intend to create, by believing that the universe is all-providing, and by knowing that I’m worthy of the unlimited beneficence of the Source of being, I just keep attracting prosperity to me.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

The universe is very large, and its boundaries are not known very well, but it is still possible to define some kind of a radius to be associated with it.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

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

Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked on the heart of the element by the psychical convergence of the universe upon itself.

We get the exciting result that the total energy of the universe is zero. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries – and therefore one of the important questions of physics. After all, what would be the use of studying physics if the mysteries were not the most important things to investigate?

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

The same thing is to be understood of all bodies, revolved in any orbits. They all endeavour to recede from the centres of their orbits, and were it not for the opposition of a contrary force which restrains them to and detains them in their orbits, which I therefore call Centripetal, would fly off in right lines with a uniform motion.

When I was a young man, Dirac was my hero. He made a breakthrough, a new method of doing physics. He had the courage to simply guess at the form of an equation, the equation we now call the Dirac equation, and to try to interpret it afterwards.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone – both to the novice and to the experienced physicist.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions.

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

Theoretical physics is one of the few fields in which being disabled is no handicap – it is all in the mind.

We are the representatives of the cosmos; we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

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.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the Universe.

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

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.

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

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.