The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far Quotes

“To argue that, in a universe in which there seems to be no purpose, our existence is without meaning or value is unparalleled solipsism, as it suggests that without us the universe is worthless. The greatest gift that science can give us is to allow us to overcome our need to be the center of existence even as we learn to appreciate the wonder of the accident we are privileged to witness.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far: Why Are We Here?

“For most people, the central questions of existence ultimately come down to transcendental ones: Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here?
Whatever presumptions one might bring to the question "Why?," if we understand the "how" better, "why" will come into sharper focus.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far: Why Are We Here?

“The most remarkable leaps into the unknown are often not fully appreciated,”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“But common sense is deceptive precisely because it is based on common experience.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far: Why Are We Here?

“The Higgs is like a toilet. It hides all the messy details”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“But being uncomfortable is a virtue, not a hindrance.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“one of the dumbest academic decisions ever made (and that is a tough list to top), Maxwell was unceremoniously laid off.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“escape the shackles of our prior experience to uncover profound and beautiful simplifications and predictions”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here?”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“Curiosity-driven research may seem self-indulgent and far from the immediate public good. However, essentially all of our current quality of life, for people living in the first world, has arisen from the fruits of such research, including all the electric power that drives almost every device we use. Two”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“The forces that govern our experience, electromagnetism and gravity, are blind to the distinction between left and right. No process moderated by either force can turn something such as your right hand into its mirror image. I cannot”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told...So Far

“children will be able to tell than the story we have told? Surely that is the greatest contribution of science to civilization: to ensure that the greatest books are not those of the past, but of the future.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told...So Far

“When I am carrying an object such as a ruler, and moving fast compared to you, my ruler will be measured by you to be smaller than it is for me. I might measure it to be 10 cm, say:

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But to you, it might appear to be merely 6 cm:

[Image]

Surely, this is an illusion, you might say, because how could the same object have two different lengths? The atoms can’t be compressed together for you, but not for me.
Once again, we return to the question of what is “real.” If every measurement you can perform on my ruler tells you it is 6 cm long, then it is 6 cm long. “Length” is not an abstract quantity but requires a measurement. Since measurement is observer dependent, so is length. To see this is possible while illuminating another of relativity’s slippery catch-22s, consider one of my favorite examples.
Say I have a car that is twelve feet long, and you have a garage that is eight feet deep. My car will clearly not fit in your garage:

[Image]

But, relativity implies that if I am driving fast, you will measure my car to be only, say, six feet long, and so it should fit in your garage, at least
while the car is moving:

[Image]

However, let’s view this from my vantage point. For me, my car is twelve feet long, and your garage is moving toward me fast, and it now is
measured by me to be not eight feet deep, but rather four feet deep:

[Image]

Thus, my car clearly cannot fit in your garage.
So which is true? Clearly my car cannot both be inside the garage and not inside the garage. Or can it?
Let’s first consider your vantage point, and imagine that you have fixed big doors on the front of your garage and the back of your garage. So that I don’t get killed while driving into it, you perform the following. You have the back door closed but open the front door so my car can drive in. When it is inside, you close the front door:

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However, you then quickly open the back door before the front of my car crashes, letting me safely drive out the back:

[Image]

Thus, you have demonstrated that my car was inside your garage, which of course it was, because it is small enough to fit in it.
However, remember that, for me, the time ordering of distant events can be different. Here is what I will observe.
I will see your tiny garage heading toward me, and I will see you open the front door of the garage in time for the front of my car to pass through.

I will then see you kindly open the back door before I crash:

[Image]

After that, and after the back of my car is inside the garage, I will see
you close the front door of your garage:

[Image]

As will be clear to me, my car was never inside your garage with both doors closed at the same time because that is impossible. Your garage is
too small.
“Reality” for each of us is simply based on what we can measure. In my frame the car is bigger than the garage. In your frame the garage is bigger than my car. Period. The point is that we can only be in one place at one time, and reality where we are is unambiguous. But what we infer about the real world in other places is based on remote measurements, which are
observer dependent.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far: Why Are We Here?

“Light travels faster in warmer, less dense air than it does in colder air.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. —JAMES 4:14”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“measurement of a system can alter its behavior”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“Light is an electromagnetic disturbance propagated through the field according to electromagnetic laws.” With”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“light is an electromagnetic wave.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“he realized that he could get an approximate answer that was “good enough” in a short time,”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“He always found a simple, easy way to reach the correct answer.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“This makes it sound as if light has intentionality, and I resisted the temptation to say light considers all paths and chooses the one that takes the least time because I fully expect that Deepak Chopra would later quote me as implying that light has consciousness.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?

“(For those who like to quote Aristotle’s wisdom when appealing to his “Prime Mover” argument for the existence of God, let us remember that he also claimed that women had a different number of teeth than men, presumably without bothering to check.) Everything”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: Why Are We Here?