Quotes from Marcelo Gleiser

We strive toward knowledge, always more knowledge, but must understand that we are, and will remain, surrounded by mystery.

Science is much better at finding things that exist than at ruling out things that don't.

The map of what we call reality is an ever-shifting mosaic of ideas.

As the island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance –the boundary between the known and the unknown. Learning more about the world doesn't lead to a point closer to a final destination but to more questions and mysteries.

Unless you are intellectually numb, you can't escape the allure of the quantum, the tantalizing possibility that we are immersed in mystery, forever bound within the shores of the Island of Knowledge. Unless you are intellectually numb, you can't escape the awe-inspiring feeling that the essence of reality is unknowable.

Whereas it (modern science) does say that we are an accident in an indifferent universe, it also says that we are a rare accident and thus not pointless.

Science is much better at finding things that exist than at ruling out things that don't.

There were no witnesses to what was about to happen. 'Happen' didn't yet exist. Reality was timeless. Space also didn't exist. The distance between two points was immeasurable. The points themselves could be anywhere, hovering and bouncing. Infinity tangled into itself. There was no here and now. Only Being.

Perfection is too hard a burden to impose on nature.

It's what we don't know that matters.

There is an enormous difference between life and intelligent life.

If large portions of the world remain unseen or inaccessible to us, we must consider the meaning of the word "reality" with great care.

We're living in very strange times. The idea of being popular for being outrageous is coming from the leadership,

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.

Só aqueles que buscam obstinadamente a verdade sabem dos tormentos que enfrentam no caminho... e merecem gozar a glória do triunfo.

Apenas aqueles que passaram longos anos buscando a verdade, imersos na escuridão da ignorância, podem compreender o júbilo transcendente da descoberta.

What is the stuff that makes everything that is?" they asked. That this remains the defining question of modern particle physics serves to show that the value of a great question is that it keeps generating answers that, in turn, keep changing as our methods of inquiry change.

Lucretius wrote in The Nature of Things: Especially since this world is the product of Nature, the happenstance Of the seeds of things colliding into each other by pure chance In every possible way, no aim in view, at random, blind, Till sooner or later certain atoms suddenly combined So that they lay the warp to weave the cloth of mighty things: Of earth, of sea, of sky, of all species of living beings.

One can't build a skyscraper out of ideas, and one can't build models without concepts and laws.

humana é capaz de desvendar todos os mistérios. Isto é

Creation, in all its splendor and misery, in all the beauty and ugliness of its myriad forms, is how God manifests His presence in time. Creation is God in time.

O importante aqui é valorizar o processo, é o querer entender que atribui significado às nossas vidas. A essência fundamental do apetite humano é essa curiosidade pelo saber, qualquer que seja ele. A ciência é apenas um dos canais que utilizamos para conhecer o mundo e também a nossa essência.

how we try to make sense of the world and of our place in it—it should be obvious that our approach is fundamentally limited in scope. This realization should open doors, not close them, since it makes the search for knowledge an open-ended pursuit, an endless romance with the unknown.

We explain the world the way we think about it. There's no way out of our minds.