Steven Weinberg quotes - page 3

Maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God. (Steven Weinberg)
Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Certainly science, because of its ability to increase our capacities to do things, raises terrible risks for us all. If it were possible to undiscover nuclear fission, I would be very happy to undiscover it, because of the risks that it puts us all under. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Even though I knew pretty early that I was going to be a scientist, it wasn't the science that interested me in science fiction; it was the vision of future societies that, for better or worse, would be radically different from our own. View quote
Steven Weinberg
It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system. View quote
Steven Weinberg
In my experience, many Americans think of religion as important and want to do whatever they can to support it. But if you ask them what they themselves believe, you'll find they're very uncertain about their religious beliefs. They don't actually accept the theology of their official church. View quote
Steven Weinberg
If we had the fundamental laws of nature tomorrow, we still wouldn't understand consciousness. We wouldn't even understand turbulence. View quote
Steven Weinberg
I'm afraid that it's not possible to design a defense against every conceivable threat that you can think of. View quote
Steven Weinberg
One thing that is clearly not maximized by free markets is equality. I am talking not about that pale substitute for equality known as equality of opportunity but about equality itself. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing. View quote
Steven Weinberg
A physicist friend of mine once said that in facing death, he drew some consolation from the reflection that he would never again have to look up the word "hermeneutics" in the dictionary. (Steven Weinberg)
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion, should be done and may, in fact, in the end, be our greatest contribution to civilization. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary. View quote
Steven Weinberg
As you learn more and more about the irrelevance of human life to the general mechanism of the universe, the idea of an interested god, becomes increasingly implausible. View quote
Steven Weinberg
This is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition. View quote
Steven Weinberg
I have a friend - or had a friend, now dead - Abdus Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me that he had a terrible time because, although they were very receptive to technology, they felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief, and they were worried about it... and damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too. View quote
Steven Weinberg
The whole history of the last thousands of years has been a history of religious persecutions and wars, pogroms, jihads, crusades. I find it all very regrettable, to say the least. View quote
Steven Weinberg
In complexity, it is only simplicity that can be interesting. View quote
Steven Weinberg
Science should be taught not in order to support religion and not in order to destroy religion. Science should be taught simply ignoring religion. View quote
Steven Weinberg
If there is a God that has special plans for humans, then He has taken very great pains to hide His concern for us. To me it would seem impolite if not impious to bother such a God with our prayers. (Steven Weinberg)
Most scientists I know don't care enough about religion even to call themselves atheists. View quote
Steven Weinberg
The universe is an enormous direct product of representations of symmetry groups. View quote
Steven Weinberg
It is positively spooky how the physicist finds the mathematician has been there before him or her. View quote
Steven Weinberg
In science we don't have prophets. We have heroes, but not prophets. View quote
Steven Weinberg