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Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.

Brian Greene

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Brian Greene
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 9
Actor
Author
Physicist
Professor
Theoretical Physicist
Writer
New York City
New York
Brian Randolph Greene
Willing
Bend
Science
Physicist
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Mathematician
Classical
Garde
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Avant
Traditional
Physicists
Mathematics
Composers
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Mathematicians

More quotes by Brian Greene

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Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that's what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism - all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see.
Brian Greene
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I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.
Brian Greene
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Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.
Brian Greene
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There are many of us thinking of one version of parallel universe theory or another. If it's all a lot of nonsense, then it's a lot of wasted effort going into this far-out idea. But if this idea is correct, it is a fantastic upheaval in our understanding.
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The revelation we've come to is that we can trust our memories of a past with lower, not higher, entropy only if the big bang - the process, event, or happening that brought the universe into existence - started off the universe in an extraordinarily special, highly ordered state of low entropy.
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For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.
Brian Greene
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The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.
Brian Greene
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The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you'll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you'll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.
Brian Greene
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Writing for the stage is different from writing for a book. You want to write in a way that an actor has material to work with, writing in the first person not the third person, and pulling out the dramatic elements in a bigger way for a stage presentation.
Brian Greene
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The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.
Brian Greene
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I think the relationship between memory and time is a very deep and tricky one, to tell you the truth. I don't consider memory another sense. I do consider memory that which allows us to think that time flows.
Brian Greene
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When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it.
Brian Greene
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Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.
Brian Greene
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Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that's been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.
Brian Greene
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You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high entropy state.
Brian Greene
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String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.
Brian Greene
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Every moment is as real as every other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'This is the real moment,' is as real as every other 'now' - and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.
Brian Greene
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Gravity is matter’s sugar daddy.
Brian Greene
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Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it.
Brian Greene
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I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.
Brian Greene