77 Quotes by Sean Carroll

Where misunderstanding dwells, misuse will not be far behind. No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans – and misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas – than quantum mechanics.

Nothingness, after all, is simpler than any one particular existing thing ever could be; there is only one nothing, and many kinds of something.

Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting.

It’s possible that we are being watched and judged by a race of super-intelligent aliens, who will think badly of us and destroy the Earth if we allow ourselves to be cowed by frivolous lawsuits and don’t turn on the LHC. When possibilities become as remote as what we’re speaking about here, it’s time to take the risks and get on with our lives.

Illusions can be pleasant, but the rewards of truth are enormously better.

Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand–born experimental physicist who was as responsible as anyone for discovering the structure of the atom, once remarked that “all of science is either physics or stamp collecting.

If everything in the universe evolves toward increasing disorder, it must have started out in an exquisitely ordered arrangement. This whole chain of logic, purporting to explain why you can’t turn an omelet into an egg, apparently rests on a deep assumption about the very beginning of the universe. It was in a state of very low entropy, very high order. Why did our part of the universe pass though a period of such low entropy?

There is a wide gap between admitting that we don’t know everything about how the mind works and remembering that whatever it does, it needs to be compatible with the laws of nature.

Don’t play Quantum Russian Roulette.