Universe Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The glory of Him who moves everything penetrates through the universe, and is resplendent in one part more and in another less.

Dante Alighieri

Although we will hate and fight the machines, we will be supplanted anyway, and rightly so, for the intelligent machines to which we will give birth may, better than we, carry on the striving toward the goal of understanding and using the Universe, climbing to heights we ourselves could never aspire to.

Whence do you have it that the terrestrial globe is so heavy? For my part, either I do not know what heaviness is, or the terrestrial globe is neither heavy nor light, as likewise all other globes of the universe. Heaviness to me (and I believe to Nature) is that innate tendency by which a body resists being moved from its natural place and by which, when forcibly removed therefrom, it spontaneously returns there. Thus a bucketful of water raised on high and set free, returns to the sea; but who will say that the same water remains heavy in the sea, when being set free there, does not move?

Galileo Galilei

I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe in that He ought to be whipped from pilar to post and back again for His shameful actions toward Humanity.

Benjamin Franklin

I do not agree with the view that the universe is a mystery, something that one can have intuition about but never fully analyze or comprehend.

Stephen Hawking

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the
gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is
the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the
universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The
fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things
are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial.

G. K. Chesterton

Knowest thou what kind of speck you art in comparison with the Universe?—That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but by the resolves of the mind. Place then thy happiness in that wherein thou art equal to the Gods.

Your scheme must be the framework of the universe; all other schemes will soon be ruins.

Henry David Thoreau

The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.

Charles Dickens

The stars and galaxies that fill our view as we survey the depths of the Universe are really just a froth delineating the massive, dark unseen structures beneath.

Stephen Hawking

Moreover, the universe as a whole is infinite, for whatever is limited has an outermost edge to limit it, and such an edge is defined by something beyond. Since the universe has no edge, it has no limit; and since it lacks a limit, it is infinite and unbounded. Moreover, the universe is infinite both in the number of its atoms and in the extent of its void.

For there is nothing that happens on earth that is more welcome to that supreme God who rules the whole universe than the institutions and congregations of men united by a sense of right, which are called states.

The mysteries of the universe and the questions that scientists strive to answer never come to an end. For that we should be grateful. A universe in which their were no mysteries for curious men to ponder would be a very dull universe indeed.

An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe.

Speaking of George MacDonald

However glorious and vast the unimaginable depths of the universe, we cannot remain lost in its glories forever.

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the Universe.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it.

The remoter and more general aspects of the law are those which give it universal interest. It is through them that you not only become a great master in your calling, but connect your subject with the universe and catch an echo of the infinite, a glimpse of its unfathomable process, a hint of the universal law.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Therefore, in the course of the work I have followed this plan: I describe in the first book all the positions of the orbits together with the movements which I ascribe to the Earth, in order that this book might contain, as it were, the general scheme of the universe.

Nicolaus Copernicus

If the total energy of the universe must always remain zero, and it costs energy to create a body, how can a whole universe be created from nothing?

Stephen Hawking

Allen: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
Woman: Yes, it is.
Allen: What does it say to you?
Woman: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos.
Allen: What are you doing Saturday night?
Woman: Committing suicide.
Allen: What about Friday night?