cosmic uncertainty Quotes

I am sitting here 93 million miles from the sun on a rounded rock which is spinning at the rate of 1000 miles an hour... and my head pointing down into space with nothing between me and infinity but something called gravity which I can't even understand, and which you can't even buy any place so as to have some stored away for a gravityless day.

You believe in a god that plays dice; I believe in law & order.

You believe in a God who plays dice, I in complete law and order.

I don't want to believe that we're the only beings out there, because to me, that's even scarier than there being other life forms. I think I always like the idea of there being something a little bit crazier than us out there.

Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who's dreaming who?

I felt in my bones that this universe does not explain itself.

All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here.

All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was." "No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.

If God resides anywhere ... surely he shelters behind barricades of pure chance.

We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space.

No one has any idea what's going to happen. Not even Elon Musk. That's why he's building those rockets. He wants a 'Plan B' on another world.

It's so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, 'cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

...our eyes locked in one of those looks that sometimes happen between strangers, when both wordlessly agree that reality contains sinkholes whose depths neither can ever hope to fathom.

It is futile to try to make the universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.

The very concept of solid ground is a myth. The galaxy itself is adrift.

He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.

The world began in hazard and will end in it.

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is.

Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.

Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida

God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?

Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon any more.