A Universe from Nothing Quotes

“When a star explodes, it briefly (over the course of about a month or so) shines in visible light with a brightness of 10 billion stars. Happily for us, stars don't explode that often, about once per hundred years per galaxy. But we are lucky that they do, because if they didn't, we wouldn't be here. One of the most poetic facts I know about the universe is that essentially every atom in your body was once inside a star that exploded. Moreover, atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than did those in your right. We are all, literally, star children, and our bodies made of stardust.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“In this sense, science, as physicist Steven Weinberg has emphasized, does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Our modern conception of the universe is so foreign to what even scientists generally believed a mere century ago that it is a tribute to the power of the scientific method and the creativity and persistence of humans who want to understand it.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Science has been effective at furthering our understanding of nature because the scientific ethos is based on three key principles: (1) follow the evidence wherever it leads; (2) if one has a theory, one needs to be willing to try to prove it wrong as much as one tries to prove that it is right; (3) the ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“why there is something rather than nothing: nothing is unstable.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“a negative charge moving backward in time is mathematically equivalent to a positive charge moving forward in time!”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“For those who find it remarkable that we live in a universe of Something, just wait. Nothingness is heading on a collision course right toward us!”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place? —LOUISE BOGAN, Journey Around My Room”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“As Einstein might have put it, only a very malicious (and, therefore, in his mind unimaginable) God would have conspired to have created a universe that so unambiguously points to a Big Bang origin without its having occurred.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes humans objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created to be sick and commanded to be well. —CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Andromeda was discovered to be another island universe, another spiral galaxy almost identical to our own, and one of the more than 100 billion other galaxies that, we now know, exist in our observable universe.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“I have challenged several theologians to provide evidence contradicting the premise that theology has made no contribution to knowledge in the past five hundred years at least, since the dawn of science. So far no one has provided a counterexample. The most I have ever gotten back was the query, ‘What do you mean by knowledge?’ From an epistemological perspective this may be a thorny issue, but I maintain that, if there were a better alternative, someone would have presented it. Had I presented that same challenge to biologists, or psychologists, or historians, or astronomers, none of them would have been so flummoxed.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“And, just as with inflation, as described in the last chapter, our observable universe is at the threshold of expanding faster than the speed of light.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Special relativity says nothing can travel through space faster than the speed of light. But space itself can do whatever the heck it wants, at least in general relativity. And as space expands, it can carry distant objects, which are at rest in the space where they are sitting,”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“We need to live our experience as it is and with our eyes open. The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“Indeed, in a strange coincidence, we are living in the only era in the history of the universe when the presence of the dark energy permeating empty space is likely to be detectable. It is true that this era is several hundred billion years long, but in an eternally expanding universe it represents the mere blink of a cosmic eye.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“One thing is certain, however. The metaphysical 'rule', which is held as an ironclad conviction by those whom I have debated the issue of creation, namely that "out of nothing nothing comes," has no foundation in science. Arguing that it is self-evident, unwavering, and unassailable is like arguing, as Darwin falsely did, when he made the suggestion that the origin of life was beyond the domain of science by building an analogy with the incorrect claim that matter cannot be created or destroyed. All it represents is an unwillingness to recognize the simple fact that nature may be cleverer than philosophers or theologians.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“But plausibility itself, in my view, is a tremendous step forward as we continue to marshal the courage to live meaningful lives in a universe that likely came into existence, and may fade out of existence, without purpose, and certainly without us at its center.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Defining away the question by arguing that the buck stops with God may seem to obviate the issue of infinite regression, but here I invoke my mantra: The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires. A world without God or purpose may seem harsh or pointless, but that alone doesn’t require God to actually exist.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Finally, and inevitably, the flat universe will further flatten into a nothingness that mirrors its beginning. Not only will there be no cosmologists to look out on the universe, there will be nothing for them to see even if they could. Nothing at all. Not even atoms. Nothing. If you think that’s bleak and cheerless, too bad. Reality doesn’t owe us comfort.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“But relying on invisible miracles is the stuff of religion, not science. To ascertain whether this remarkable accident was real, physicists relied on another facet of the quantum world. Associated with every background field is a particle, and if you pick a point in space and hit it hard enough, you may whack out real particles.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“The tapestry that science weaves in describing the evolution of our universe is richer and far more fascinating than any revelatory images or imaginative stories that humans have concocted. Nature comes up with surprises that far exceed those that the human imagination can generate.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“Nevertheless, all of these phenomena imply that, under the right conditions, not only can nothing become something, it is required to.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“the universe could have expanded during this inflationary period by a factor of more than 1028. While this is an incredible amount, it amazingly could have happened in a fraction of a second in the very early universe.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“[T]he declaration of a First Cause still leaves open the question, "Who created the creator?" After all, what is the difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one?”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“К счастью для нас, звезды не взрываются столь часто, примерно раз в сто лет в галактике. Но нам повезло, что они взрываются, потому что, если бы не это, нас бы здесь не было. Один из самых поэтичных фактов, которые я знаю о Вселенной, что, по сути, каждый атом в вашем теле произошел из звезды, которая взорвалась. Более того, атомы в левой руке, возможно, произошли из одной звезды, а в правой — из другой. Мы все, буквально, звездные дети, и наши тела сделаны из звездной пыли.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“Indeed, the best answer I have ever heard to the question of what it would be like to be dead (i.e., be nonbeing) is to imagine how it felt to be before you were conceived.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“CHAPTER 8 A GRAND ACCIDENT? Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes humans objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created to be sick and commanded to be well. —CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS We”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing

“Does this prove that our universe arose from nothing? Of course not. But it does take us one rather large step closer to the plausibility of such a scenario. And it removes one more of the objections that might have been leveled against the argument of creation from nothing as described in the previous chapter. There, “nothing” meant empty but preexisting space combined with fixed and well-known laws of physics. Now the requirement of space has been removed. But, remarkably, as we shall next discuss, even the laws of physics may not be necessary or required.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing