Top 120 Brian Greene Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level.”

— Brian Greene

2. “String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.”

— Brian Greene

3. “Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding...”

— Brian Greene

4. “My best teachers were not the ones who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by questions they couldn’t answer.”

— Brian Greene

5. “Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.”

— Brian Greene

6. “One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease.”

— Brian Greene

7. “If string theory is right, the microscopic fabric of our universe is a richly intertwined multidimensional labyrinth within which the strings of the universe endlessly twist and vibrate, rhythmically beating out the laws of the cosmos.”

— Brian Greene

8. “Einstein’s theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things. Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum – for small things.”

— Brian Greene

9. “I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence.”

— Brian Greene

10. “Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.”

— Brian Greene

11. “Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.”

— Brian Greene

12. “Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.”

— Brian Greene

13. “The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.”

— Brian Greene

14. “There’s no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator.”

— Brian Greene

15. “The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.”

— Brian Greene

16. “Our eyes only see the big dimensions, but beyond those there are others that escape detection because they are so small.”

— Brian Greene

17. “Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.”

— Brian Greene

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

18. “We might be the holographic image of a two-dimensional structure.”

— Brian Greene

19. “Cosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it’s no wonder. We’re storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?”

— Brian Greene

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

20. “The fact that I don’t have any particular need for religion doesn’t mean that I have a need to cast religion aside the way some of my colleagues do.”

— Brian Greene

21. “No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you’re going to fail.”

— Brian Greene

22. “Art makes us human, music makes us human, and I deeply feel that science makes us human.”

— Brian Greene

23. “The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.”

— Brian Greene

24. “Nature’s patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It’s nature’s version of nature versus nurture.”

— Brian Greene

25. “Quantum Mechanics is different. Its weirdness is evident without comparison. It is harder to train your mind to have quantum mechanical tuition, because quantum mechanics shatters our own personal, individual conception of reality.”

— Brian Greene

26. “Energy is the ultimate convertable currency.”

— Brian Greene

27. “We do not know whether there are extra dimensions or multiverse. Let’s go forward with the possible ideas that come out of the mathematics. It’s hard for us to imagine a universe that would have no time at all.”

— Brian Greene

28. “It’s hard to teach passionately about something that you don’t have a passion for.”

— Brian Greene

29. “The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you’ll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you’ll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.”

— Brian Greene

30. “All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns; be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression.”

— Brian Greene

31. “Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. ‘Where did the totality of reality come from?’ ‘Did time have a beginning?’”

— Brian Greene

32. “Relativity challenges your basic intuitions that you’ve built up from everyday experience. It says your experience of time is not what you think it is, that time is malleable. Your experience of space is not what you think it is; it can stretch and shrink.”

— Brian Greene

33. “We are living through a remarkably privileged era, when certain deep truths about the cosmos are still within reach of the human spirit of exploration.”

— Brian Greene

34. “The idea that there could be other universes out there is really one that stretches the mind in a great way.”

— Brian Greene

35. “In essence, we string theorists have been trying to work out the score of the universe, the harmonies of the universe, the mathematical vibrations that the strings would play. So musical metaphors have been with us in science since the beginning.”

— Brian Greene

36. “Gravity is matter’s sugar daddy.”

— Brian Greene

37. “For me it’s been very exciting to contribute to the public’s understanding of how rich and wondrous science is.”

— Brian Greene

38. “Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.”

— Brian Greene

39. “My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I’d like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.”

— Brian Greene

40. “Supersymmetry is a theory which stipulates that for every known particle there should be a partner particle. For instance, the electron should be paired with a supersymmetric ‘selectron,’ quarks ought to have ‘squark’ partners, and so on.”

— Brian Greene

41. “I enjoy reading blogs, but am not interested in having my spurious thoughts out there.”

— Brian Greene

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42. “There are many of us thinking of one version of parallel universe theory or another. If it’s all a lot of nonsense, then it’s a lot of wasted effort going into this far-out idea. But if this idea is correct, it is a fantastic upheaval in our understanding.”

— Brian Greene

43. “Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.”

— Brian Greene

44. “Every moment is as real as every other. Every ‘now,’ when you say, ‘This is the real moment,’ is as real as every other ‘now’ – and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.”

— Brian Greene

45. “I’ve seen children’s eyes light up when I tell them about black holes and the Big Bang.”

— Brian Greene

46. “There may be many Big Bangs that happened at various and far-flung locations, each creating its own swelling, spatial expanse, each creating a universe – our universe being the result of only one of those Big Bangs.”

— Brian Greene

47. “Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that’s what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism – all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see.”

— Brian Greene

48. “Experimental evidence is the final arbiter of right and wrong.”

— Brian Greene

49. “We’re on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions.”

— Brian Greene

50. “Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.”

— Brian Greene