Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe (1999)

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

Brian Greene
Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.

Brian Greene
Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules and brush the edge of acceptability in the search for solutions. Mathematicians are more like classical composers, typically working within a much tighter framework, reluctant to go to the next step until all previous ones have been established with due rigor. Each approach has its advantages as well as drawbacks; each provides a unique outlet for creative discovery. Like modern and classical music, it's not that one approach is right and the other wrong – the methods one chooses to use are largely a matter of taste and training.

Brian Greene
For string theory to make sense, the universe should have nine spacial dimensions and one time dimension, for a total of ten dimensions.

Brian Greene
Quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

Brian Greene
String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.

Brian Greene
Far from being accidental details, the properties of nature's basic building blocks are deeply entwined with the fabric of space and time.

Brian Greene
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
Calculations that merge the equations of general relativity and those of quantum mechanic typically yield one and the same ridiculous answer: infinity. Like a sharp rap on the wrist from an old-time schoolteacher, an infinite answer is nature's way of telling us that we are doing something that is quite wrong.

Brian Greene
When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it.

Brian Greene
One measure of the depth of a physical theory is the extent to which it poses serious challenges to aspects of our worldview that had previously seemed immutable

Brian Greene
You must allow Nature to dictate what is, and what is not, sensible.

Brian Greene