Quotes by Paul Davies

“Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.”

“The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously com...”

“God is a pure mathematician!' declared British astronomer Sir James Jeans. The physical Universe does seem to be organised around elegant mathematical relationships. And one number above all others...”

“The significance of [the fine-structure constant] goes far beyond atomic physics, however. It is the smallness of 1/137 compared to unity that enables us to treat the coupling between the electroma...”

“Until now, I've been writing about "now" as if it were literally an instant of time, but of course human faculties are not infinitely precise. It is simplistic to suppose that physical events and m...”

“Perhaps there are many "nows" of varying duration, depending on just what it is we are doing. We must face up to the fact that, at least in the case of humans, the subject experiencing subjective t...”

“Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too sma...”

“Man-made computers are limited in their performance by finite processing speed and memory. So, too, the cosmic computer is limited in power by its age and the finite speed of light.”

“Is there anything science should not try to explain? Science is knowledge and knowledge is power - power to do good or evil. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

“The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-centu...”

“The origin of life is one of the great outstanding mysteries of science.”

“Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inqu...”

“A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence suggests, exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently ...”

“In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.”

“Clearly, some creative thinking is badly needed if humans are to have a future beyond Earth. Returning to the Moon may be worthy and attainable, but it fails to capture the public's imagination. Wh...”

“It may be bizarre but in my opinion science offers a sure path to God and religion.”

“It may be bizarre but in my opinion science offers a sure path to God and religion.”

“In the emerging picture of mankind in the universe, the future (if it exists) will surely entail discoveries about space and time which will open up whole new perspectives in the relationship betwe...”

“Science, it is usually believed, helps us to build a picture of objective reality – the world 'out there'. With the advent of the quantum theory, that very reality appears to have crumbled, to be r...”

“All this prompts the question of why, from the infinite rage of possible values that Nature could have selected for the fundamental constants, and from the infinite variety of initial conditions th...”