From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time

by Sean Carroll

In the case of time, it’s not that we live in the spatial vicinity of an influential object; it’s that we live in the temporal vicinity of an influential event: the birth of the universe.

Napoleon took the opportunity to mischievously ask, “M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.” To which Laplace answered stubbornly, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”103