“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”

(1993), Epilogue, p. 155
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of …" by Steven Weinberg?
Steven Weinberg photo
Steven Weinberg 46
American theoretical physicist 1933

Related quotes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“Farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

20 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Louis Bromfield photo

“She had come long ago to understand that loneliness was the curse of those who were free, even of all those who rose a little above the level of ordinary humanity.”

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956) American author and conservationist

Early Autumn : A Story of a Lady (1926)

Halldór Laxness photo

“It is justice, not love, that will one day give life to the children of the future. The battle for justice is the one thing which gives human life rational meaning.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Örn Úlfar
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

Edgar Allan Poe photo
Isa Bowman photo

“It is not easy to make an effort and to remember all the little personalia of some one one has loved very much, and by whom one has been loved.”

Isa Bowman (1874–1958) British actress

Page 1.
The Story of Lewis Carroll (1899)

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 33
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)
Context: As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.

James Madison photo

“A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to W.T. Barry http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html (4 August 1822), in The Writings of James Madison (1910) edited by Gaillard Hunt, Vol. 9, p. 103; these words, using the older spelling "Governours", are inscribed to the left of the main entrance, Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building.
1820s

John Bartholomew Gough photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo

Related topics