80 Quotes by Roger Penrose

Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor’s New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.

Mathematical truth is not determined arbitrarily by the rules of some ‘man-made’ formal system, but has an absolute nature, and lies beyond any such system of specifiable rules. Support for the Platonic viewpoint... was an important part of Godel’s initial motivations.

I’m pretty tenacious when it comes to problems.

These are deep issues, and we are yet very far from explanations. I would argue that no clear answers will come forward unless the interrelating features of all these worlds are seen to come into play. No one of these issues will be resolved in isolation from the others. I have referred to three worlds and the mysteries that relate them one to another. No doubt there are not really three worlds but one, the true nature of which we do not even glimpse at present.

If you didn’t have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn’t be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

If we try to make general inferences about the theoretical possibility of a reliable computational model of the brain, we ought indeed to come to terms with the mysteries of quantum theory.

Mathematical truth is not determined arbitrarily by the rules of some ‘man-made’ formal system, but has an absolute nature, and lies beyond any such system of specifiable rules.

There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there by chance.

Sometimes it's the detours which turn out to be the fruitful ideas.