Explore Quotes by Brian Greene

I think it's too fast to say that all sci-fi ultimately winds up having some place in science. On the other hand, imaginative minds working outside of science as storytellers certainly have come upon ideas that, with the passing decades, have either materialized of come close to materializing.

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.

We're on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions.

Einstein's theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things. Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum - for small things.

In my own research when I'm working with equations, I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing if I'm solely relying on the mathematics for my understanding. I need to have a visual picture in my mind. I'm constantly translating from the math to some intuitive mind's-eye picture.

There's no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator.

Black holes provide theoreticians with an important theoretical laboratory to test ideas. Conditions within a black hole are so extreme, that by analyzing aspects of black holes we see space and time in an exotic environment, one that has shed important, and sometimes perplexing, new light on their fundamental nature.

Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.

The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.

The fact that I don't have any particular need for religion doesn't mean that I have a need to cast religion aside the way some of my colleagues do.

The idea that there could be other universes out there is really one that stretches the mind in a great way.

Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.

The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.

Every moment is as real as every other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'This is the real moment,' is as real as every other 'now' - and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.

One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease.

Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.

Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. Where did the totality of reality come from? Did time have a beginning?

The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.

Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it.

It's hard to teach passionately about something that you don't have a passion for.

I've seen children's eyes light up when I tell them about black holes and the Big Bang.