Quotes about space
page 8

“We want, in a word, to fulfil nature’s wishes, to further the destinies of humanity, to keep the promises of philosophy, to absolve providence of the long reign of crime and tyranny. So that France, once illustrious among enslaved countries, eclipsing the glory of all the free peoples that have existed, may become the model for all nations, the terror of oppressors, the consolation of the oppressed, the ornament of the universe; and that in sealing our work with our blood, we may at least glimpse the shining dawn of universal felicity. That is our ambition, that is our goal.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

"On the Principles of Political Morality that Should Guide the National Convention in the Domestic Administration of the Republic" (5 February 1794)

Nature, People, Country

“I really agree that Yog-Sothoth is a basically immature conception, & unfitted for really serious literature. The fact is, I have never approached serious literature yet. But I consider the use of actual folk-myths as even more childish than the use of new artificial myths, since in the former one is forced to retain many blatant peurilities & contradictions of experienced which could be subtilised or smoothed over if the supernaturalism were modelled to order for the given case. The only permanently artistic use of Yog-Sothothery, I think, is in symbolic or associative phantasy of the frankly poetic type; in which fixed dream-patterns of the natural organism are given an embodiment & crystallisation... But there is another phase of cosmic phantasy (which may or may not include frank Yog-Sothothery) whose foundations appear to me as better grounded than those of ordinary oneiroscopy; personal limitations regarding the sense of outsideness. I refer to the aesthetic crystallisation of that burning & inextinguishable feeling of mixed wonder & oppression which the sensitive imagination experiences upon scaling itself & its restrictions against the vast & provocative abyss of the unknown. This has always been the chief emotion in my psychology; & whilst it obviously figures less in the psychology of the majority, it is clearly a well-defined & permanent factor from which very few sensitive persons are wholly free.... Reason as we may, we cannot destroy a normal perception of the highly limited & fragmentary nature of our visible world of perception & experience as scaled against the outside abyss of unthinkable galaxies & unplumbed dimensions—an abyss wherein our solar system is the merest dot... The time has come when the normal revolt against time, space, & matter must assume a form not overtly incompatible with what is known of reality—when it must be gratified by images forming supplements rather than contradictions of the visible & measurable universe. And what, if not a form of non-supernatural cosmic art, is to pacify this sense of revolt—as well as gratify the cognate sense of curiosity?”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 293
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Time, Imagination, Personality, Dreams

“By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite and which, whether their name be Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us their unique rays many centuries after the hearth from which they emanate is extinguished.This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Par l’art seulement, nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n’est pas le même que le nôtre et dont les paysages nous seraient restés aussi inconnus que ceux qu’il peut y avoir dans la lune. Grâce à l’art, au lieu de voir un seul monde, le nôtre, nous le voyons se multiplier, et autant qu’il y a d’artistes originaux, autant nous avons de mondes à notre disposition, plus différents les uns des autres que ceux qui roulent dans l’infini et qui, bien des siècles après qu’est éteint le foyer dont il émanait, qu’il s’appelât Rembrandt ou Vermeer, nous envoient encore leur rayon spécial.Ce travail de l’artiste, de chercher à apercevoir sous la matière, sous de l’expérience, sous des mots, quelque chose de différent, c’est exactement le travail inverse de celui que, à chaque minute, quand nous vivons détourné de nous-même, l’amour-propre, la passion, l’intelligence, et l’habitude aussi accomplissent en nous, quand elles amassent au-dessus de nos impressions vraies, pour nous les cacher entièrement, les nomenclatures, les buts pratiques que nous appelons faussement la vie.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VII: The Past Recaptured (1927), Ch. III: "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes"

Intelligence, Nature, Art, Self-confidence

“It was not against Louis the XVIth, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back; and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the augean stable of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed, by any thing short of a complete and universal revolution.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Preface
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“My own conclusion is that today there is no interpretation of quantum mechanics that does not have serious flaws. This view is not universally shared. Indeed, many physicists are satisfied with their own interpretation of quantum mechanics. But different physicists are satisfied with different interpretations. In my view, we ought to take seriously the possibility of finding some more satisfactory other theory, to which quantum mechanics is only a good approximation.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

Source: Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (2012, 2nd ed. 2015), Ch. 3: General Principles of Quantum Mechanics

“It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. … It is very hard to realise that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

(1993), Epilogue, p. 154
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)

Hostility, Future, Relation ships, Life

“We call on the United Nations once again to uphold the principle of universality and its multilateral efforts toward total inclusion and to allow Taiwan to participate in relevant extensions on a dignified and equal footing.”

Mswati III (1968) King of Swaziland

Mswati III (2019) cited in: " Allies voice support for Taiwan's inclusion in U.N. activities http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201909260004.aspx" in Focus Taiwan, 26 September 2019. Statement made during the General Debate of the 74th general assembly of the United Nations, 25 September 2019.

Effort

“For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interests the common interest of all the members of society, that is, sality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

"Concerning the production of Consciousness"
The German Ideology (1845/46)

Appearance, Making love

“Any liberal system must proceed from the assumption that freedom is one and indivisible and that elementary human freedom in all spheres of life must go hand in hand with political, religious, economic and spiritual freedom. The strategy of collectivist thinking has always been to split up this most essential and most universal of human values as a means of making inroads into the free system itself.”

Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977) German politician

The Economics of Success (D. van Nostrand & Co., 1963), pp. 291–292

Freedom, Thinking, Life, Making love

“I am more and more convinced that poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere and at all times in hundreds and hundreds of men. … I therefore like to look about me in foreign nations, and advise everyone to do the same. National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Conversations with Eckermann (entry for 31 January 1827)

Time, Literature, World, Men

“Everything is evil. I mean, everything that is, is wicked; every existing thing is an evil; everything exists for a wicked end. Existence is a wickedness and is ordained for wickedness. Evil is the end, the final purpose, of the universe…The only good is nonbeing; the only really good thing is the thing that is not, things that are not things; all things are bad.”

Giacomo Leopardi book Zibaldone

19th April 1826.
Zibaldone (1898)

Bad luck, Evil

“What was novel in Voegelin’s thought was that he wedded that commonplace to a theory of history, suggesting that a universal process of symbolization was surreptitiously at work in human civilization, giving world history a discernible direction.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Mark Lilla, "Mr. Casaubon in America", The New York Review of Books (June 28, 2007)

World, Wedding, History

“The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Russell Kirk, " Ten Conservative Principles http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/detail/ten-conservative-principles/" (1993)

People, Nature, Women, Men

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

The Sacred Pipe (1953)

Peace, Soul, Understanding, People

“This new patriarch Fox said one day to a justice of peace, before a large assembly of people. "Friend, take care what thou dost; God will soon punish thee for persecuting his saints." This magistrate, being one who besotted himself every day with bad beer and brandy, died of apoplexy two days after; just as he had signed a mittimus for imprisoning some Quakers. The sudden death of this justice was not ascribed to his intemperance; but was universally looked upon as the effect of the holy man's predictions; so that this accident made more Quakers than a thousand sermons and as many shaking fits would have done. Cromwell, finding them increase daily, was willing to bring them over to his party, and for that purpose tried bribery; however, he found them incorruptible, which made him one day declare that this was the only religion he had ever met with that could resist the charms of gold.
The Quakers suffered several persecutions under Charles II; not upon a religious account, but for refusing to pay the tithes, for "theeing" and "thouing" the magistrates, and for refusing to take the oaths enacted by the laws.
At length Robert Barclay, a native of Scotland, presented to the king, in 1675, his "Apology for the Quakers"; a work as well drawn up as the subject could possibly admit. The dedication to Charles II, instead of being filled with mean, flattering encomiums, abounds with bold truths and the wisest counsels. "Thou hast tasted," says he to the king, at the close of his "Epistle Dedicatory," "of prosperity and adversity: thou hast been driven out of the country over which thou now reignest, and from the throne on which thou sittest: thou hast groaned beneath the yoke of oppression; therefore hast thou reason to know how hateful the oppressor is both to God and man. If, after all these warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto the Lord, with all thy heart; but forget Him who remembered thee in thy distress, and give thyself up to follow lust and vanity, surely great will be thy guilt, and bitter thy condemnation. Instead of listening to the flatterers about thee, hearken only to the voice that is within thee, which never flatters. I am thy faithful friend and servant, Robert Barclay."”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

The most surprising circumstance is that this letter, though written by an obscure person, was so happy in its effect as to put a stop to the persecution.
The History of the Quakers (1762)

God, Peace, Religion, Beer

“The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin, even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they're manifestations of the same thing...They spring from the same source. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt as humans to build an understanding of the universe, the world around us. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us.”

Mae Jemison (1956) American doctor and NASA astronaut

2002 TED talk by Mae Jemison https://www.ted.com/talks/mae_jemison_on_teaching_arts_and_sciences_together/transcript?language=en, TED talk "Teach arts and sciences together," February, 2002

Understanding, Spring, Art, World

“Our home, pale blue dot in the vastness of universe's untouched beauty, a tiny spherical world, afloat in a immensity of space and time. Here for a moment, and then we're leaving for the eternity. In the school of mortality we learn to acrobat over the abyss.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

From the book "Universal consciousness"

School, Home, Time, Beauty

“We are so tiny under the vast sky,
our mankind home
is just a tiny speck
in the immeasurable reaches of a boundless universe,
we find an immense and highly ordered system of galaxies stars and planets,
all moving with great precision,
the heavenly wisdom vibrates in our hearts.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and wisdom

Home, Star, Heart, Wisdom

“Every created thing in the whole universe is but a door leading into His knowledge, a sign of His sovereignty, a revelation of His names, a symbol of His majesty, a token of His power, a means of admittance into His straight Path…”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh

Knowledge

“Western philosophy and science have for the most part been committed to the Simplicity Theory of Truth: the simplest theory that accounts for the data is the true theory. (Theories are simplest which postulate the fewest entities, require the fewest hypotheses, generate predictions by the fewest calculations, etc.) ...If someone believes that the world is made for him to have dominion over and he is made to exploit it, he must believe that he and the world are so made that he can, at least in principle, achieve and maintain dominion over everything. But you can’t put things to use if you don’t know how they work. So he must believe that he can, at least in principle, understand everything. If the world exists for man, it must be usably intelligible, which means it must be simple enough for him to understand. A usable universe is an intelligible universe is a simple universe. ...And so it goes with the philosophy and the science of The Arrogant Eye.”

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 71

Understanding, Intelligence, Truth, World

“This justice, which is so universal but which nevertheless, owing to the encroachments of force and to the influence of religion, has never as yet prevailed in the world of politics, of law, or of economics, should serve as a basis for the new world. Without it there is no liberty, no republic, no prosperity, no peace! It should therefore preside at all our resolutions in order that we may effectively cooperate in establishing peace.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom (1867)

Peace, Religion, Justice, Law

“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Hope, Happy, Hope

“Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“A human being is a flower that originates miraculously amidst a cosmic desert, capable of becoming a blossoming universal tree if we recognize this meaning and sincerely desire to.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Tree, Flowers, Sincerity

“I believe that the mind is the last planet that’s left unexplored—Achieving the universal or cosmic consciousness is the highest goal to mankind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The law of giving and receiving is simply this: In a universe where the most absolute truth is that of oneness, you can not ever take, without taking from yourself. And you cannot give without giving to yourself. That is why those who give, get back and those who take, are taken from.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Source: tealswan.com/quotes

Law, Truth

“God lives in “want” of nothing. Anything God wants, God can have. Yet God does have desires. It is God’s desire that fuels the engine of creation. It is Divine Desire that powers the universe.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God

“There is only one emotion, one energy, in the universe: the energy, the emotion, that we call Love. When you know this, everything changes.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Love, Change

“The goodness of the Universe is not limited. When something "looks as if" it is running out, do not fret. This, or something better, is on its way. Sufficiency is the natural order of things. Good never runs out -- although it may change form.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Change, Nature, Way

“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

People

“Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Justice

“The universe is seeming really huge right now. I need something to hold on to.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot

Faith

“Truth is naturally universal… and shines into many different windows, though many are clouded.”

Anya Seton book Green Darkness

Source: Green Darkness

Truth, Nature

“A smile is the universal welcome.”

Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist

Source: The Sense of Humor

Smile

“Ah, Mastery of the Five Elements!"
"Is that the one we want?" I asked.
"No, but a good one. How to tame the five essential elements of the universe - earth, air, water, fire, and cheese!"
"Cheese?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Water

“It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

79
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Money, God, Imagination

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

Life, Funny, Intelligence

“Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Life, World, Beauty, Water

“Some rules are bigger than the universe.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“The universe is an intelligence test”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

As quoted in Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) by Robert Anton Wilson, p. 170

Intelligence

“The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Hell, Sense

“His eyes met mine at the soft touch, and a chime seemed to shake the ley line, realigning the universe.

He was mine.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

“Nothing
would be
easier without
you,
because you
are
everything,
all of it-
sprinkles, quarks, giant
donuts, eggs sunny-side up-
you
are the ever-expanding
universe
to me.”

Kate DiCamillo (1964) American children's writer

Source: Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

“And who are all these people? There weren't this many when I fell asleep."
Alfie shrugged, indicating that the universe was mysterious and nothing would ever be fully understood.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

People

“I am blind and limited. I would be a fool think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. I must be true to my heart.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

Fools, Knowledge, Thinking, Time

“Things are as bad as you fear they are. People are as bad as you think they are. The Universe does not care.”

Charlie Huston Sleepless

Source: Sleepless

People, Fear, Thinking

“She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Color

“The universe is the way it is, whether we like
it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent
of our desires. A world without God or purpose may seem harsh
or pointless, but that alone doesn ' t require God to actually exist.”

Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist

Source: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

God, World, Way

“The Universe is on the side of Justice”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Justice

“My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Comment on "I am Neil deGrasse Tyson -- AMA", November 13, 2011 http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c2zg9lk, 2010s

“John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe niel and I”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirjournals/id/115/show/3, which started 1 July 1867 1860s

“The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Nature

“I read the first chapter ofwhen Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life, Time, Reading

“At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: A History of Reading

Secret, Books, Childhood

“For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Pain, Time, Indifference

“Every sentence, every word, was new to them and they listened to what he said like bright-eyed ravens, trembling in their eagerness to catch & interpret every sound in the universe.”

Toni Morrison book Song of Solomon

Source: Song of Solomon

“Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Faith, Way, Understanding

“Isolated, she managed somehow to feel free—albeit with a freedom that made her want to smash a hole in the very center of the universe.”

Flora Rheta Schreiber (1918–1988) American journalist

Source: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

Feeling, Freedom

“Can I hold your hand?" he asked.
I put mine in his.
"The universe is seeming really huge right now," he told me. "I need something to hold on to."
"I'm here.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“he threw up his hands
and wrote the Universe dont exist
and died to prove it”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Variant: The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.
Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Learning

“The most important decision we can make is whether this is a friendly or hostile universe. From that one decision all others spring.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Multiple variations of this quote can be found, but the earliest one on Google Books which uses the phrase "friendly or hostile" and attributes it to Einstein is The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spiritual Healing by Susan Gregg (2000), p. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=XLQ8X67PozAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false, and this book gives no source for the quote. A variant is found in Irving Oyle's The New American Medicine Show (1979) on p. 163, where Oyle writes: 'There is a story about Albert Einstein's view of human existence. Asked to pose the most vital question facing humanity, he replied, "Is the universe friendly?"' This variant is repeated in a number of books from the 1980s and 90s, so it probably pre-dates the "friendly or hostile" version. And the idea that the most important question we can ask is "Is the universe friendly?" dates back much earlier than the attribution to Einstein, for example in Emil Carl Wilm's 1912 book The Problem of Religion he includes the following footnote on p. 114 http://books.google.com/books?id=nWYiAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA114#v=onepage&q&f=false: 'A friend proposed to the late F. W. H. Myers the following question: "What is the thing which above all others you would like to know? If you could ask the Sphinx one question, and only one, what would the question be?" After a moment's silence Myers replied: "I think it would be this: Is the universe friendly?"' Misattributed

Hostility, Spring, Decision

“We doctors know a hopeless case if — listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

XIV : pity this busy monster, manunkind
1 x 1 (1944)
Variant: listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go

Hell

“How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

“There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe… but not for us.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Hope

“All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Children, Truth, Soul, Birth

“I have found my star. She is beauty and grace. Elegance and goodness. My laughter in winter. She is courageous and strong. Bold and tempting. Unlike any other in all the universe, and I cannot touch her. I dare not even try." [Zarek]”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Beauty, Star, Courage, Laughter

“Music has power to create a universe or to destroy a civilization.”

Katherine Neville book The Eight

Source: The Eight

Music

“I've been going insane reading my students' papers. Apparently several of them think the Hubble Space Telescope is used to search the universe for hubbles."
~ Ithana Aaronson”

Jeanne Birdsall (1951) American children's writer

Source: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

Search, Thinking, Reading

“So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

2000s
Context: No matter who you are, engaging in the quest to discover where and how things began tends to induce emotional fervor—as if knowing the beginning bestows upon you some form of fellowship with, or perhaps governance over, all that comes later. So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.

Life

“We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the
meaning of it all.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Books, Dogs, Cats

“Humor is just another defense against the
universe.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

“The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Question, Personality

“And if I'm alone in bed, I will go to the window, look up at the sky, and feel certain that loneliness is a lie, because the Universe is there to keep me company.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Our fate

Loneliness, Feeling, Lie

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Basis of Morality

Animals

“Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Heart

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but though his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: 1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Education, Suicide, Time, Envy

“The more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

World, Feeling

“The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Sense, Chance

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Life, Truth, Parting

“whether it is clear or unclear to you the universe is folding as it should”

Carolyn Mackler (1973) American writer

Source: Tangled

“With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat chaped holes in the universe.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

World, Cats

“Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

Star

“I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

“It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Faith

“We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Dreams, Thinking, Animals

“I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Understanding, Sleep

“If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Thinking

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

Source: On Suicide

Life

“The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.”

Lisa Unger book Beautiful Lies

Source: Beautiful Lies

Truth, Secret

“Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world.
But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Pain, World, Happiness

“The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Love, Way

“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to Phyllis Wright (January 24, 1936), published in Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein's Letters to and from Children (Prometheus Books, 2002), p. 129
1930s

Law, Science