“As I once heard Andrew—that’s my disappearing brother—say: ‘Life consist in accommodating oneself to the Universe.’ Although the rest of our family has never taken that view. We believe if forcing the Universe to accommodate itself to us. It’s all a question of which one is to be master.”

— Robert A. Heinlein, book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XLVIII : L’Envoi or Rev. XXII: 13, p. 486

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As I once heard Andrew—that’s my disappearing brother—say: ‘Life consist in accommodating oneself to the Universe.’ Alt…" by Robert A. Heinlein?

Robert A. Heinlein557

American science fiction author 1907–1988

Related quotes

“Science simply forces us to revise what is sensible to accommodate the universe, rather than vice versa.”

Lawrence M. Krauss book A Universe from Nothing

Source: A Universe from Nothing, Simon & Schuster (2012), p. 151

“Cooperation is not a merger. There's no need to crush oneself to accommodate others.”

James Soong (1942) Chairman of People First Party, former Governor of Taiwan Province

James Soong (2015) cited in " Eric Chu taps former labor head as running mate and James Soong taps Hsu Hsin-ying http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2015/11/18/451246/Eric-Chu.htm" on China Post, 18 November 2015

“Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

“There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“As Edward P. Tryon of Columbia University once put it: "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things that happen from time to time." To which adds Guth: "Although the creation of a universe might be very unlikely, Tryon emphasized that no one had counted the failed attempts."”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

On the Big Bang
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“A river is nearly the ultimate symbol for the very essence of change itself. It flows unceasing from one point of being to another, yet continuously occupies the same bed or pathway, and accommodates life’s endings with the same musical grace with which it accommodates life’s beginnings, along with all the muted and explosive moments that surface between the two extremes.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Evolution of a Vision: from Songs of the Angelic Gaze to The River of Winged Dreams, p. 3).
Book Sources, The River of Winged Dreams (2010)

“The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. Evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought were consistent with the workings of the universe.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 4 “The Universality Argument (and the Relevance of Morality and Mathematics)” (p. 131)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Quoted from the Discovery Channel, 15 August 2011. <br class="br"> "Stephen Hawking There is no God. There is no Fate." from episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7VTdzuY7Y · [Curiosity: Did God Create the Universe?, http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/did-god-create-the-universe.htm, Discovery Communications, LLC., 7 August 2011, 4 July 2013] <br class="br">Curiosity (2011)

“Linguistic accommodation as well. Are they speaking my language or am I speaking theirs? I can never know: the transaction cannot watch itself being transacted.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Slaves of Time (p. 16)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“But this I thought was the meaning of life, that the individual shook off the habit of accepting the favors of difference, should that be tempting, steeled himself against its humiliation, should that weigh down on him, in order to find the universal, what is common to all human beings, to concern oneself only with that. Oh! How beautiful to lose oneself in this way. But then I thought again that in the having of this concern the meaning of life was to be concerned for oneself as if the particular individual were all there was. Oh! How beautiful thus to find oneself in the universal! If the universal is the rule then the individual is the paradigm [corrected from demand]; if the universal is the demand then the universal is the fulfillment; if the universal is everything, if the universal says everything, then the particular individual believes that the everything is said about him-him alone. So if the place and context here did not require signature, none would be needed, for again it is infinitely inconsequential who has said it (as though the favored one said it, the one who was wronged being in no position to say it, since after all they all have it in them to do it).”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

S. Kierkegaard 1846 Journals, Hannay 1996, VII IB200, p. 252
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Robert A. Heinlein557

Related quotes

Related topics