John Oliver (1977) English comedian
Last Week Tonight (15 June 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPV3D7f3bHY <br class="br">Last Week Tonight (2014&ndash;present)
Source: Alien Dawn (1998), pp. 301-302
John Oliver (1977) English comedian
Last Week Tonight (15 June 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPV3D7f3bHY <br class="br">Last Week Tonight (2014&ndash;present)
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist
2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author
"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
Context: So what shall I make of the voice that spoke to me recently as I was scuttling around getting ready for yet another spell on a chat-show sofa?
More accurately, it was a memory of a voice in my head, and it told me that everything was OK and things were happening as they should. For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?
Me, actually — the part of all of us that, in my case, caused me to stand in awe the first time I heard Thomas Tallis's Spem in alium, and the elation I felt on a walk one day last February, when the light of the setting sun turned a ploughed field into shocking pink; I believe it's what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc2.
It's that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn't require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.
I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.
“Yes I did when I was at university 30 years ago, just for a short time.”
Harriet Harman (1950) British politician
On smoking cannabis http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6907040.stm, 20 July, 2007.
Brian Greene (1963) American physicist
In response to David Letterman's question, "What do we now know [about the universe] we didn’t know before?" on The Late Show (23 March 2005)
Context: Well, a big question is how did the universe begin. And we, cannot answer that question. Some people think that the big bang is an explanation of how the universe began, its not. The big bang is a theory of how the universe evolved from a split second after whatever brought it into existence. And the reason why we’ve been unable to look right back at time zero, to figure out how it really began; is that conflict between Einstein’s ideas of gravity and the laws of quantum physics. So, string theory may be able to — it hasn’t yet; we’re working on it today — feverishly. It may be able to answer the question, how did the universe begin. And I don’t know how it’ll affect your everyday life, but to me, if we really had a sense of how the universe really began, I think that would, really, alert us to our place in the cosmos in a deep way.
“I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.”
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician
2012
December
All Eyez on Him
Michael
Hainey
GQ
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201212/marco-rubio-interview-gq-december-2012?currentPage=2
Posed question: How old do you think the Earth is?
2010s, 2012
Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist
Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I.
The Early Universe (2012)
“When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.”
Peter O'Toole (1932–2013) Irish film and stage actor