Freeman Dyson Quotes

There are two different ways of looking at the universe; and it's the same universe with two different windows. The science window gives you a view of the world, and the religion window gives you a totally different view. You can't look at both of them at the same time, but they're both true.

Intuitive faith and reasoned judgment are not the same. Spirit is not always thought. But, in the everyday business of living, secular or otherwise, these variant aspects of personality find inseparable expression in a thousand ways. They cannot be altogether parted in law more than in life.

Science and religion are, of course, two different ways of looking at the universe; and it's the same universe with two different windows.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

I think the phrase that resonates from 'Just One Year' is something I sort of live by: 'The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.'

I guess I found it useful to realise that everything is true at once, you know? You can pull back and say, 'Everything will be fine,' but you can also be in a situation and say, 'Not everything is going to be fine.'

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

Two seemingly incompatible conceptions can each represent an aspect of the truth ... They may serve in turn to represent the facts without ever entering into direct conflict.

A scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion.

I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

When you see things upside down, the ego can be extraordinarily funny; it's absurd. But it's tragic at the same time.

There's a duality of a guy calling on God: 'Where are you when I need you?' and then, at the same time, 'God helps those who help themselves.' I think that contradiction does exist in all of us, those of faith and those who profess to have no faith.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Truth is truth, whether labeled 'science' or 'religion.'

There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

Christianity had two faces which bewildered me - two pictures which didn't fit.

There is real confusion about what it means to be right and wrong - the difference between what spiritual beliefs are and what science is.

Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense tells you is not true.

Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.