Top 120 Alan Lightman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics. The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.”

— Alan Lightman

2. “We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not. And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.”

— Alan Lightman

3. “The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.”

— Alan Lightman

4. “Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.”

— Alan Lightman

5. “It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.”

— Alan Lightman

6. “The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?”

— Alan Lightman

7. “You say, “Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse.” And that’s enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.”

— Alan Lightman

8. “If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”

— Alan Lightman

9. “A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.”

— Alan Lightman

10. “As a scientist, I don’t believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.”

— Alan Lightman

11. “The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.”

— Alan Lightman

12. “I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don’t believe there’s a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.”

— Alan Lightman

13. “You’ve made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.”

— Alan Lightman

14. “So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.”

— Alan Lightman

15. “My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you’re not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You’re actually discovering in the writing process, you’re actually creating knowledge.”

— Alan Lightman

16. “Suppose that time is not a quantity but a quality, like the luminescence of the night above the trees just when a rising moon has touched the treeline. Time exists, but it cannot be measured.”

— Alan Lightman

17. “For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.”

— Alan Lightman

18. “We often do not see what we do not expect to see.”

— Alan Lightman

19. “Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.”

— Alan Lightman

20. “The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.”

— Alan Lightman

21. “The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.”

— Alan Lightman

22. “A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door’s shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.”

— Alan Lightman

23. “Where the two times meet, desperation. Where the two times go their separate ways, contentment. For, miraculously, a barrister, a nurse, a baker can make a world in either time, but not in both times. Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.”

— Alan Lightman

24. “Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.”

— Alan Lightman

25. “Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”

— Alan Lightman

26. “Everyone shares the same fate.”

— Alan Lightman

27. “A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.”

— Alan Lightman

28. “For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”

— Alan Lightman

29. “Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.”

— Alan Lightman

30. “In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final. In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.”

— Alan Lightman

31. “In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.”

— Alan Lightman

32. “Most people have learned how to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed in for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time to be judged on their own.”

— Alan Lightman

33. “Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.”

— Alan Lightman

34. “As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?”

— Alan Lightman

35. “Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.”

— Alan Lightman

36. “As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.”

— Alan Lightman

37. “Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?”

— Alan Lightman

38. “Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.”

— Alan Lightman

39. “Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.”

— Alan Lightman

40. “I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we’re required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection. I believe that we need to slow down.”

— Alan Lightman

41. “No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.”

— Alan Lightman

42. “My second novel, Good Benito, was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.”

— Alan Lightman

43. “Time paces forward with exquisite regularity, at precisely the same velocity in every corner of space. Time is an infinite ruler. Time is absolute.”

— Alan Lightman

44. “While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.”

— Alan Lightman

45. “Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.”

— Alan Lightman

46. “Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?”

— Alan Lightman

47. “Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who.”

— Alan Lightman

48. “In a world where time cannot be measured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments. Events are triggered by other events, not by time.”

— Alan Lightman

49. “In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.”

— Alan Lightman

50. “I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.”

— Alan Lightman