Steven Weinberg

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

"Religion is an insult to morality."

"Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible to not believe in God."

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

"One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious."

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

"I want to persuade the reader that scientists are not just narrow technical experts, but deep thinkers engaged in the process of understanding the world."

"The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."

"Scientific ideas are not arbitrary."

"A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises."

"Beauty is power; a beautiful person commands attention."

"We are the products of 4 billion years of evolution; we should try to understand what we are."

"Teaching is not a natural act; it's a learned profession."

"The universe operates by natural laws; we discover them through observation and experiment."

"Symmetry principles underlie the fundamental forces of nature."

"Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness."

"To summarize, the goal of physics is a complete understanding of all natural phenomena."

"The laws of nature are universal and impersonal."

"We are made of starstuff; we are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

"The beauty of a mathematical law lies in its universality."

"History is not a science; it is a narrative."

"Technology changes society, but not always in predictable ways."

"The human mind evolved to solve practical problems, not to understand fundamental physics."

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that."

"Progress requires both optimism and realism."

"The pursuit of truth is a noble endeavor."

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but action in spite of it."

"Change is the only constant in the universe."

"Hope is the belief that tomorrow will be better than today."

"Happiness comes from meaningful work and deep relationships."