"An interersting thing to keep in mind is that the known universe is made of up quarks, down quarks, electrons, neutrinos, and gauge bosons. All the other quarks and leptons have been made at accelerators (and occasionally by collisions of energetic cosmic rays in the earths atmosphere), and existed at an early stage of the universe and play no known role in the universe today or since soon after the big bang."
The universe comprises all of existence: all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from sub-atomic particles to entire galactic filaments. Since the early 20th century, the field of cosmology establishes that space and time emerged together at the Big Bang 13.787±0.020 billion years ago and that the universe has been expanding since then. The observable portion of the universe
"Mans need of self-esteem entails the need for a sense of control over reality – but no control is possible in a universe which, by ones own concession, contains the supernatural, the miraculous and the causeless, a universe in which one is at the mercy of ghosts and demons, in which one must deal, not with the unknown, but with the unknowable; no control is possible if man proposes, but a ghost disposes; no control is possible if the universe is a haunted house."
"Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
"With the cosmological term, Einstein had given other researchers an intriguing new variable to play with and manipulate in an attempt to fit their s with the new ideas they were considering and with the observations that were starting to be made. It also opened the door for theorists to experiment with the equations — with or without the newly introduced term — to see what other interpretations might be plausible, other than a universe that neither expands nor contracts. One could, of course, conjure up all kinds of conceivable universes with wildly different properties. However, among the conceivable universes, only those that satisfied general relativity’s could be deemed plausible. And among the possible universes sifted out through mathematics, perhaps one of those might bear a close resemblance to the universe we actually inhabit."
"I will shred this Universe down to its last atom, and then with the stones you have collected for me, create a new one; teaming with life, that knows not what it has lost but only what it has been given... A Grateful Universe."
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
"As long as you keep getting born, it’s okay to die sometimes."
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
"History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles. When you go to Mexico City through space, you find it a sort of cross between modern Madrid and modern Chicago, with additions of its own; but if you go to Mexico City through history, back only 500 years, you will find it as distant as though it were on another planet: inhabited by cultivated barbarians, sensitive and cruel, highly organized and still in the Copper Age, a collection of startling, of unbelievable contrasts."
"As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually ‘thinking’ it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics—the model of all neo-positivistic thinking—lies in just this ‘intellectual economy.’ Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based. … Reason … becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced."
"Our feminist culture at the present moment is completely dependent on capitalism. My grandmother was still scrubbing clothes on the back porch on a washboard!"
"A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. (23)"