Timothy Spall Quotes

Ever since the Enlightenment, people thought that we were living in a rational universe. They thought that God was a mathematician and that the function of the scientist was to figure out the mathematical rules whereby the universe was created.

I think religion and science operate in different regimes. Religion is a belief system that tries to give meaning and comprehension to peoples' lives. Science is more about the mechanics of the universe around us and the way in which it works. And I don't think those things have to be mutually exclusive.

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

One idea I explore in my stand-up show is whether, if you try looking at the universe rationally and avoid coping mechanisms like mysticism or religion, you can still be happy knowing you are going to die after a brief time on this spinning ball.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

We get the exciting result that the total energy of the universe is zero. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries - and therefore one of the important questions of physics. After all, what would be the use of studying physics if the mysteries were not the most important things to investigate?

If you see a philosopher determining all things by means of right reason, him you shall reverence: he is a heavenly being and not of this earth.

The scientific issues that engage people most are the truly fundamental ones: is the universe infinite? Is life just a sideshow in the cosmos? What happened before the Big Bang? Everyone is flummoxed by such questions, so there is, in a sense, no gulf between experts and the rest.

Far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit.

Fundamental physics is like an art more or less. It's completely non-practical, and you can't use it for anything. But it's about the universe and how the world came into being. It's very remote from your daily life and mine, and yet it defines us as human beings.

I lose sleep at night wondering whether we are intelligent enough to figure out the universe. I don't know.

In truth, every creation of the mind is first of all 'poetic' in the proper sense of the word; and inasmuch as there exists an equivalence between the modes of sensibility and intellect, it is the same function that is exercised initially in the enterprises of the poet and the scientist.

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. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

One of the things that I've been doing recently in my scientific research is to ask this question: Is the universe actually capable of performing things like digital computations?

Facts matter. Science matters. Reason matters. Mitt Romney has shown an inability to respect any of the three. President Barack Obama not only respects them, he relies on them. He is an overwhelming and unquestioned choice to continue as president.

The truth is, man is hereunto led by reason which is his nature.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

There are still so many questions to answer. When you look at any part of the universe, you have to feel humbled.

Heisenberg, Max Plank and Einstein, they all agreed that science could not solve the mystery of the universe.

People want to know about what's going on with what's in the universe, what are particles like, what are the basic rules of nature. It's a lot of curiosity out there.

When science tries to resolve its conflicts by adding and subtracting dimensions to the Universe like houses on a Monopoly board, we need to examine our dogmas.

First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.

Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.