The Upright Thinkers Quotes

“A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Robert Frost wrote in 1914, “Why abandon a belief / Merely because it ceases to be true.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Paleolithic humans migrated often, and, like my teenagers, they followed the food.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Einstein, who was then a professor in Berlin, was by chance visiting Caltech in the United States the day Hitler was appointed.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Upon learning of the young man’s interest in a physics book, Lindemann, a number theorist, abruptly ended the interview, saying, “In that case you are completely lost to mathematics.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Well, I have been working on my own theory for twelve years,” and then he proceeded to describe it in excruciating detail. When he was finished, Feynman turned to me and said, in front of the man who had just proudly described his work, “That’s exactly what I mean about wasting your time.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Our species had to engage in complex cooperative behavior in order to survive in the wild, and—as I keep reminding my teenage children—pointing and grunting get you only so far.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“research on hunter-gatherer groups ranging from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries shows that the average nomad worked just two to four hours each day.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“paleontological evidence suggests that the early farmers had more spinal issues, worse teeth, and more anemia and vitamin deficiencies—and died younger—than the populations of human foragers who preceded them.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Thomas Edison is often said to have advised, “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Albert Einstein wrote, “One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness.… Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“medieval scholars made surprising progress, despite living in an age in which people routinely judged the truth of statements not according to empirical evidence but by how well they fit into their preexisting system of religion-based beliefs—a culture that is inimical to science as we know it today.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“One end of the spectrum of fantastical thinking is labeled “crackpot,” and the other “visionary.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Instead, like Heisenberg, his priority seemed to be to preserve as much of German science as possible, while complying with all Nazi laws and regulations.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“1943 Bohr was tipped off by the Swedish ambassador in Copenhagen that he faced immediate arrest as part of the plan to deport all of Denmark’s Jews.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Born, barred from teaching and worried about the ongoing harassment of his children, also immediately sought to leave Germany.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“they left for California, Einstein had told his wife to take a good look at their house. “You will never see it again,” he told her.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“The Nazis confiscated his personal property, burned his works on relativity, and put a five-thousand-dollar bounty on his head.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Heisenberg, who was attempting to hold German physics together, resented Schrödinger’s departure, “since he was neither Jewish nor otherwise endangered.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“My father had drawn number 3,004 in a death lottery in which German precision trumped Nazi brutality.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“the destination was the local cemetery, where everyone was ordered to dig a mass grave and then was shot dead and buried in it.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“They required three thousand Jews, the man said, and the line had apparently held 3,004.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“I wouldn’t have to drop out of academia and take a more lucrative position waiting tables at the faculty club.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“in 1904 he applied for a promotion from patent clerk third class to patent clerk second class and was turned down.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“It all began when the Beagle’s previous captain, Pringle Stokes, shot himself in the head and, after the bullet didn’t kill him, died of gangrene.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos