quotes

There is an infinite number of possible universes, and as only one of them can be actual, there must be sufficient reason for the choice of God, which leads Him to decide upon one rather than another.

-- G. W. Leibniz (mathematician, 1714, from ``The Monadology''

The fabric of the world has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere.

-- Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa (15th Century)

For I can end as I began. From our home on earth we look out into the distances and strive to imagine the sort of world into which we are born. Today we have reached far out into space. Our immediate neighborhood we know intimately. But with increasing distance our knowledge fades...until at the last dim horizon we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be suppressed.

-- Edwin Hubble (astronomer, from his last scientific paper)

I cannot deny the feeling of unreality in writing about the first three minutes as if we really know what we are talking about.

-- Steven Weinberg (physicist, Nobel Prize)

A pair of pigeons was roosting up in the small part of the horn where it enters the warm cab. They had covered the inside with a white material familiar to all city dwellers. We evicted the pigeons and cleaned up their mess, but obtained only a small reduction in antenna temperature.

-- Robert P. Wilson (physicist, Nobel Prize address)

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

--T. S. Eliot