Lawrence M. Krauss

The one experience that I hope every student has at some point in their lives is to have some belief you profoundly, deeply hold, proved to be wrong because that is the most eye-opening experience you can have, and as a scientist, to me, is the most exciting experience I can ever have.

If our species is to survive, our future will probably require outposts beyond our own planet.

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.

I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.

To the extent that we even understand string theory, it may imply a massive number of possible different universes with different laws of physics in each universe, and there may be no way of distinguishing between them or saying why the laws of physics are the way they are. And if I can predict anything, then I haven't explained anything.

The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.

The universe is the way it is , whether we like_x000D_ it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent_x000D_ of our desires . A world without God or purpose may seem harsh_x000D_ or pointless, but that alone doesn ' t require God to actually exist.

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.

When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction - like space travel - the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.

As a physicist, I've always found cosmology to be a rational elixir; it distances me from ordinary concerns.

Symmetries are the playing field on which the physical world works and which determine the rules of the game. The symmetries of nature determine for us things that remain constant, that can't be changed. Those are the guideposts in physics, the quantities like energy and momentum.

Keeping religion immune from criticism is both unwarranted and dangerous.

The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.

Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Teaching and writing, to me, is really just seduction; you go to where people are and you find something that they're interested in and you try and use that to convince them that they should be interested in what you have to say.

What we can do is provide the tools, through our educational system, for people to be able to tell sense from nonsense. These tools include the scientific method, skeptical questioning, empirical evidence, verifying sources, etc.

For the record: Quantum mechanics does not deny the existence of objective reality. Nor does it imply that mere thoughts can change external events. Effects still require causes, so if you want to change the universe, you need to act on it.

When a person's religious beliefs cause him to deny the evidence of science, or for whom public policy morphs into a battle with the devil, shouldn't that be a subject for discussion and debate?