Alan Lightman Quotes

Quotes about:

• If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

  Alan Lightman

  Ambition, Suffering, World

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.33, Vintage

  46 Copy quote

• In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons, it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn't there. Or ignore what is. We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality. We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.

  Alan Lightman

  Dream, Real, Order

  Alan Lightman (2014). “The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew”, p.5, Vintage

  30 Copy quote

• In this world, time has three dimensions, like space. Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures. Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real. At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.

  Alan Lightman

  Real, Moving, Fate

  Alan Lightman (2012). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.13, Hachette UK

  39 Copy quote

• Most people have learned to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. ... It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.

  Alan Lightman

  Learning, Past, Islands

  31 Copy quote

• Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

  Alan Lightman

  Live Life, Butterfly, Sadness

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.47, Vintage

  34 Copy quote

• One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.

  Alan Lightman

  Time, Church Bells, Years

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.25, Vintage

  28 Copy quote

• I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.

  Alan Lightman

  Writing, Our World, Long

  ""Mr g," by Alan Lightman". Interview with Jeff Glor, www.cbsnews.com. January 24, 2012.

  25 Copy quote

• While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

  Alan Lightman

  People, Geneva, Skip

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.27, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

  Alan Lightman

  Pain, Past, Joy

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.42, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?

  Alan Lightman

  Moving, World, Faster

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

• No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

  Alan Lightman

  Imagination, God Exists, Literary Works

  5 Copy quote

• We've lost our way, we have lost our centeredness. We don't have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what's important. I would bet most people don't have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don't have to be sitting, they can be walking.

  Alan Lightman

  Thinking, People, Important

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

  8 Copy quote

• For me, consciousness is the most interesting unsolved problem of science, and, in fact, we may never know what it is about a particular arrangement of neurons that gives rise to consciousness. Our consciousness, like the air we breathe or like the passage of time, is central to our existence as intelligent beings.

  Alan Lightman

  Intelligent, Air, Giving

  12 Copy quote

• Everyone shares the same fate.

  Alan Lightman

  Fate, Share

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.38, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.

  Alan Lightman

  Spiritual, Atheist, Believe

  "Reviewing Mr g: Physicist-turned-novelist Alan Lightman meets God at the intersection of science and religion". Interview With Greg Quill, www.thestar.com. February 12, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• -But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.

  Alan Lightman

  New Experiences, Irrational, Rational

  9 Copy quote

• Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?

  Alan Lightman

  Selfish, Rain, Ocean

  17 Copy quote

• One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones. In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads. When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are...they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded. We have become disembodied. By being always somewhere else we are nowhere.

  Alan Lightman

  Phones, Cells, Somewhere Else

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

  4 Copy quote

• So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.

  Alan Lightman

  Life, Zero, Littles

  Alan Lightman (2012). “Mr g: A Novel About the Creation”, p.27, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• For me, spirituality includes the belief in things larger than ourselves, an appreciation of nature and beauty, a sensitivity to the world, a feeling of shared connection with other living things, a desire to help people less fortunate than ourselves. All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.

  Alan Lightman

  Spiritual, Appreciation, Atheist

  4 Copy quote

• As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.

  Alan Lightman

  Knowing, Law, Long

  Alan Lightman (2014). “The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew”, p.37, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• We're plugged in 24 hours a day now. We're all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not. And if we can't unplug from that machine, eventually we're going to become mindless.

  Alan Lightman

  Machines, Hours, Conscious

  8 Copy quote

• A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

  Alan Lightman

  Life, Autumn, Doors

  5 Copy quote

• We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

  Alan Lightman

  Spiritual, Atheist, Believe

  10 Copy quote

• It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

  Alan Lightman

  Kissing, Past, World

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.30, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

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