Steven Weinberg

"Scientific progress depends on the willingness of scientists to admit when they are wrong."

"I think the most important thing we can teach young people is to question authority and think for themselves."

"The fundamental particles of matter are far more mysterious than we once thought."

"Life would be meaningless without the pursuit of understanding."

"The universe operates according to mathematical principles that are beyond our intuition."

"We should respect the complexity of nature and not oversimplify it."

"Science is one of humanity's greatest achievements, but it is not the answer to all questions."

"The pursuit of truth is the noblest calling of science."

"Nature reveals itself gradually, only to those who are patient enough to listen."

"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."

"Religion is an insult to morality."

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

"I think the laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible."

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

"If we find that the universe does not satisfy our aesthetic criteria, we must simply accept it."

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

"We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, by comparison, we are less than specks."

"The universe has a beginning, but no beginning of the beginning, and no cause of the beginning."

"Nothing in physics, as I understand it today, requires anything remotely resembling an act of creation."

"The burden of proof is on the believer, not on the skeptic."

"I would not want to depend on the existence of anything supernatural for the meaning of my life."

"The effort to understand the universe is almost the only thing that lifts human life a little above the level of farce."

"Beauty is not the fundamental physical principle of the universe. It's something we construct."

"There are a lot of things worth doing that are not pleasant or profitable."

"Science is not just a collection of laws, a catalogue of unrelated facts. It is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts."

"I believe that today there is no worldview which is fully satisfactory."

"The problem with religion is that it gets people to believe things without evidence, and that's incompatible with science."

"If I had to guess, I would say that the probability of God is low."

"The hope that I had when I began was that we could describe all particles and forces in nature in terms of mathematics."

"In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself. Nature makes plenty of trouble."