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?

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.

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

No one undertakes research in physics with the intention of winning a prize. It is the joy of discovering something no one knew before.

Energy begets energy.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

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.

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

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

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.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

I need physics more than friends.

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.

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

My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected.

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

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness. I admired and respected her – for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

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.

I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.

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

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

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

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.

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

I’m an energy vampire. I just suck off everybody’s energy. But I give it back.

I think California has the best energy.

Before I started school striking I had no energy, no friends and I didn’t speak to anyone. I just sat alone at home, with an eating disorder. All of that is gone now, since I have found a meaning, in a world that sometimes seems shallow and meaningless to so many people.

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.

There is nothing bigger or older than the universe.

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

There were several possible solutions of the difficulty of classical electrodynamics, any one of which might serve as a good starting point to the solution of the difficulties of quantum electrodynamics.

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

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

The big message of gospel is that you don’t have to keep fighting the universe; you can stop, and the universe is quite good to you. There is a loss of ego.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

The main thing that’s missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics.

Chemistry, until my childhood, not that long ago, was regarded as a calculating device. Because you couldn’t reduce to physics. So it’s just some way of calculating the result of experiments. The Bohr atom was treated that way.

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

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

What goes up must come down.

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.

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

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

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.

There is nothing your highest self wants more than peace. This peace makes you feel worthy of all of the richest blessings of the universe, and when you radiate this out into the world, it is returned to you without fail.

Cosmology is a rapidly advancing field.

It’s obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.

If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

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