Lawrence M. Krauss
There is a maxim about the universe which I always tell my students: That which is not explicitly forbidden is guaranteed to occur.Collection: Students
The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.Collection: Religion
What science is all about is a process. It's like saying, "Well, is it important for people to know that World War II happened?" Well it's part of what makes us who we are. And so, there's basic bits of science we need to know.Collection: War
At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.Collection: Heart
Now, almost one hundred years later, it is difficult to fully appreciate how much our picture of the universe has changed in the span of a single human lifetime. As far as the scientific community in 1917 was concerned, the universe was static and eternal, and consisted of a one single galaxy, our Milky Way, surrounded by vast, infinite, dark, and empty space. This is, after all, what you would guess by looking up at the night sky with your eyes, or with a small telescope, and at the time there was little reason to suspect otherwise.Collection: Eye
Most people don't base their morality on religion in spite what they say. If you ask people, "If you didn't believe in God, would you go out and kill your neighbour?" Most people will say, "No".Collection: Believe
Of course, supernatural acts are what miracles are all about. They are, after all, precisely those things that circumvent the laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about.Collection: Communication
We live at a very special time . . . the only time when we can observationally verify that we live at a very special time!Collection: Special
It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: you are all stardust.Collection: Poetic
For, after all, in science one achieves the greatest impact (and often the greatest headlines) not by going along with the herd, but by bucking against it.Collection: Impact
Metaphysical speculation is independent of the physical validity of the Big Bang itself and is irrelevant to our understanding of it.Collection: Independent
In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection.Collection: Years
Occam's razor suggests that, if some event is physically plausible, we don't need recourse to more extraordinary claims for its being. Surely the requirement of an all-powerful deity who somehow exists outside of our universe, or multiverse, while at the same time governing what goes on inside it, is one such claim. It should thus be a claim of last, rather than first, resort.Collection: Powerful
Now, since the time of Newton there had been a debate about whether light was a wave - that is, a traveling disturbance in some background medium - or a particle, which travels regardless of the presence of a background medium. The observation of Maxwell that electromagnetic waves must exist and that their speed was identical to that of light ended the debate: light was an electromagnetic wave.Collection: Light
If you have nothing in quantum mechanics, you will always have something.Collection: Mechanic
You shouldn't be afraid of science. Accepting the reality of nature makes life more exciting and even more precious.Collection: Reality
I hope that every [person] at one point in their life has the opportunity to have something that is at the heart of their being, something so central to their being that if they lose it they won't feel they're human anymore, to be proved wrong because that's the liberation that science provides. The realization that to assume the truth, to assume the answer before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.Collection: Heart
The really important thing is learning how to sceptically question and rely on empirical evidence.Collection: Important
Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then natural philosophy became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time theres a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.Collection: Philosophy
In this sense, science, as physicist Steven Weinberg has emphasized, does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God.Collection: Believe
The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.Collection: People
Discerning the merits of competing claims is where the empirical basis of science should play a role. I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false. What fails the test of empirical reality, as determined by observation and experiment, gets thrown out like yesterday's newspaper.Collection: Stress
Celebrate our brief moment in the sunCollection: Sun
There are a lot of legislators who are afraid that kids will learn science and lose their faith.Collection: Kids
I like to say that while antimatter may seem strange, it is strange in the sense that Belgians are strange. They are not really strange; it is just that one rarely meets them.Collection: May
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.Collection: Truth
The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded.Collection: Stars
We all trust each other to some extent. We have to rely on experts to some extent, but we should learn to be sceptical.Collection: Experts
Science is not just there for technology. It's part of what addressing who you are in the universe and understanding your place in the cosmos. Good art, good literature, good music - all of that is for that and science is a part of it.Collection: Art
What people believe impacts on what they do. And it's not as if religion is universally bad. Of course it's responsible for many peoples doing good actions.Collection: Believe
My area of research is something that in all fairness has no practical usability whatsoever and the thing is I'm often asked to apologize for that. It is interesting to me that people ask 'what's the point of doing that if it's not useful?' But they never ask that, or do they very rarely ask that about art or literature or music. Those things are not gonna produce a better toaster.Collection: Art