William James Quotes

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

On a really dark night, you can see between 1,000 and 1,500 stars, and there are millions more that haven't been discovered. It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all. -Brian Fitzgerald

The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.

Movies about space raise those questions of what we're doing here, and that inevitably introduces a spiritual dimension.

'Who are we?' And to me that's the essential question that's always been in science fiction. A lot of science fiction stories are - at their very best - evocations of that question. When we look up at the night sky and wonder, 'Is there anyone else out there?' we're also asking who we are we in relation to them.

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

Nature hasn't gone anywhere. It is all around us, all the planets, galaxies and so on. We are nothing in comparison.

What you can show using physics, forces this universe to continue to exist. As long as you're using general relativity and quantum mechanics you are forced to conclude that God exists.

I mean I think that when you've got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, you naturally fall to thinking about the deep mysteries. Where do we come from? Where does the world come from? Where does the universe come from?

We see the universe the way it is because we exist.

The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow.

Years ago, I was crashed in gram’s garden and Big asked me what I was doing. I told him I was looking up at the sky. He said, “That’s a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.

I'm too small for the universe to revolve around me. It is a huge relief!

The choice is: the Universe...or nothing.

We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men.

If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us.

When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

Every child who is born is the universe looking at itself with fresh eyes.

Imagine" he said, "never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.

We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.

Feeling a little small? Well, in the context of the cosmos, we are small.

I've nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is that we’re actually living on a planet in space. For me that’s an extraordinary thought. It’s mind-boggling just to think about the existence of space at all. But there are girls who can’t see the universe for eye liner.

The anthropic principle is an unfortunate name as it implies something about humanity.