“There is no fixed, eternal frame to the universe to define what may or may not exist.”
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (2000)
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Lee Smolin52
American cosmologist 1955Related quotes
“The universe may
be as great as they say.
But it wouldn't be missed
if it didn't exist.”
Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet
Nothing Is Indespensable : Grook to warn the universe against megalomania
Grooks
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity
Context: "God does not think, He creates; He does not exist, He is eternal," wrote Kierkegaard (Afslutende uvidenskabelige Efterskrift); but perhaps it is more exact to say with Mazzini, the mystic of the Italian city, that "God is great because his thought is action" (Ai giovani d'Italila), because with Him to think is to create, and He gives existence to that which exists in His thought by the mere fact of thinking it, and the impossible is unthinkable by God. It is not written in the Scriptures that God creates with His word — that is to say, with His thought — and that by this, by His Word, He made everything that exists? And what God has once made does He ever forget? May it not be that all the thoughts that have ever passed through the Supreme Consciousness still subsist therein? In Him, who is eternal, is not all existence eternalized?
Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 154
Zeno of Citium (-334–-263 BC) ancient Greek philosopher
As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives of Eminent Philosophers: 'Zeno', 7.87.
The "end" here means “the goal of life.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality
Third Essay, Section 4
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
“The world may need fixing, but it's worth preserving.”
Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire
Source: The Throne of Fire
“Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars.”
Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena
Vol. 2 "The Art of Literature" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Context: Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. A meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. You look up and cry “There!” and it is gone forever. Planets and wandering stars last a much longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars and are confounded by them by the inexperienced; but this only because they are near. It is not long before they must yield their place; nay, the light they give is reflected only, and the sphere of their influence is confined to their orbit — their contemporaries. Their path is one of change and movement, and with the circuit of a few years their tale is told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant; their position in the firmament is secure; they shine with a light of their own; their effect today is the same as it was yesterday, because, having no parallax, their appearance does not alter with a difference in our standpoint. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth.
“Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.”
Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge
In re Rouss, 221 NY 81, 91 (N.Y. 1917)
Judicial opinions